Is Lima the Most Photogenic City in the World?

Lima does lead the world in the number of topiary llama,
although that creature to the right of the "PERU" letters looks more like a topiary llama/walrus hybrid.

One of the reasons I enjoy returning to Lima is that I consider Lima to be, maybe, perhaps, the most photogenic city I've ever been to. In my opinion. But by any reasonable standards, Lima really ought to be in the conversation.

Today's walking tour of the Centro Historico did not hit all of the highlights that make this so photogenic.

For example, Lima has a magnificent ocean coastline, with steep cliffs right behind the narrow ribbon of beach sand. Sort of like the La Jolla part of San Diego. The ocean coastline is part of what makes this city so photogenic, but it's not part of what makes the Centro Historico so beautiful.

Above is the Casa Roosevelt. It's just an apartment building, but look at it. It's named the Casa Roosevelt because it is on Avenida Franklin D. Roosevelt. An ordinary building on an ordinary street. But it's extraordinary looking. (If you are waiting for me to make a comment about how modern architecture stucks (a hybrid word combining "stink" and "sucks" that I just invented), this is not where that will happen. This is the Centro Historico. There is no modern architecture in this part of the city for me to loathe. You have to go to the upscale "suburban" parts of the city -- Miraflores and Barranco -- right alongside those wonderful oceanside cliffs -- for me to able to comment disparagingly on modern architecture (and it's evil stepchild post-modernism). 

Let's wander deeper into the Centro Historico.

Again, ordinary building on an ordinary street that is anything but ordinary looking.

This is the area around Plaza José de San Martín. I believe the above building is the Club Nacional. I believe the below building wishes not to divulge its identity.

But it's in the same neighborhood.

And this is Plaza José de San Martín.

In the center of the square is the statue of José de San Martín, an Argentine general known as the liberator of Argentina, Chile, and Peru in the war to free Peru from the yoke of Spanish oppression and subjugation.

So Lima has its fair share of historic, heroic statuary. It also has a distinct architectural style element:

It is those fully-enclosed second-floor balconies. It is a design element that is a signature of Lima architecture. 

Any candidate for world's most photogenic must have a unique architectural signature.

And this golden door is quite photogenic. You'll never guess what this is a doorway to:

A shop that sells gold.

So what makes Lima so photogenic? Yes, it is a little frayed around the edges, a little beaten up, but it's a beautiful city alongside a beautiful stretch of ocean, with historic architecture that goes back more than a millennium and a half (the Huaca Pucllana pyramid in the Miraflores neighborhood). As far as the historic functional architecture in the city, I think only Rome and Athens beat Lima among world class cities. Lima also has impressive colonial buildings, breath-takingly beautiful churches and cathedrals, and wonderful public spaces. The only thing it is missing is the impressive geographic setting of Rio de Janeiro or San Francisco. And, yes, the port of Callao is horrifically ugly.

And we haven't even made it to the Plaza Mayor on this photo tour because I am going to take a museum break: the Museo Central:

It's about midway between the Plaza de José de San Martín and the Plaza Mayor.

The Museo Central is in an old bank building and parts of the bank space have been converted into exhibit space.

The teller cage is an exhibit case on the history of Peruvian coinage.

The main floor is a brief slice of Peruvian historical artifacts

From the main floor, if you go down the stairs, you are in the pre-hispanic (pre-Colombian) era artifacts. If you go up the stairs, you are in an exhibit of Peruvian painting.

Going down:

The first section was for the Vicus people, with whom I was not previously familiar, as they lived in the extreme north of Peru, along what is now the Ecuadorian border.

We then move to the Moche:

The Moche were the builders of Chan Chan. They lived in the area around what is now the City of Trujillo.

Someone is enjoying their bilateral wet willie.

You know you are in the Moche section when this happens:

The Moche loved to make their pottery pr0n-o-graphic. They are not wrestling. This is not hand-to-hand combat. This is exactly what it looks like it is. And it's Moche.

The Moche. There's one like 'em in every crowd.

They are the pre-Colombian equivalent of that guy you know who would punctuate every comment with "That's what she said."

This is the display for the Nasca people, a more virtuous people who devoted themselves to drawing lines in the desert sand that, a millennium and a half later, we still can't even come up with a decent guess as to why they did what they did when they did that.

Their pottery, at least, is normal and explicable.

This is the small collection from the Lambayeque people who lived in and around Chiclayo (home to Papa Leon XIV, the current pope):

The gold work is more impressive than the Lambayeque ceramic engineering.

But there's more impressive gold work to come.

This could be innocent:

But this one looks more like the work of the Moche than the Lambayeque:

I'm sorry but you are not going to convince that that is supposed to be a boat. Yeah, I know that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But sometimes it's not. And I think this is one of the times that the cigar is not something you smoke.

The Chavin people go back not only to the pre-hispanic era, but the pre-Christ era. So the Chavin are not well-represented here. They are represented only by this fish:

It's an impressive enough fish, especially if it is from "B.C." and I do not mean "before COVID."

Finally, we reach the stars of the Peruvian tourism show, the Inca:

We start with what I think is the most fascinating artifact of the Inca era: the quipu. Quipus are the knotted strands of cloth that functioned as a record-keeping system. Again, I can't get enough quipus.

Inca ceramics were not their main focus. For that, we have to step inside the bank vault in the basement of this repurposed bank building.

Inside the vault is the gold collection.

Inca gold.

Gold face jewelry.

Gold accessories:

Even gold tumis.

Tumis? Knives. But uni-tasker knives, knives with a single purpose.

Beheading.

Let's hope that didn't happen to above guy.

Time to leave the basement and walk the stairs to the second floor. This was the Peruano painting section. There was only one work that stood out for me. And it was prototypically Peruvian, maybe even cliched:

"Paisaje" by Camilo Blas. I think those animals, at least the ones to the left, might be guanacos rather than llamas. Guanacos look like llamas, at least the top half does, but they move like antelopes. But it does look like a llama to the right.

That's all the museum for the day. Let's get back to photographing this photogenic city.

Not far from the Museo Central is the Plaza Mayor. And at the edge of the Plaza Mayor is the Cathedral.

There is of course a fountain at the center of the Plaza Mayor.

Notice all of those Lima style balconies.

The rock there has some historical significance.

As does the statue of Francisco Pizarro behind the rock:

Let's keep walking. Pizarro, by the way, is buried in the Cathedral, a block and a plaza from his statue.

And below is the Casa de Correos y Telegrafos, which has been repurposed into the Casa de la Gastronomía Peruana, a museum devoted to Peruvian gastronomy.

Peruvian food is one of the world's great cuisines. In the New World, only the cuisine of Mexico occupies the same level. So it is one of the great tragedies of my era of Peruvian tourism that the Casa de la Gastronomía Peruana has been closed. When will it open?

I can look inside. I just can't go inside.

This is the Basilica and Convent of Santo Domingo:

I went inside two months ago when I was here. Maybe, tomorrow, I will come back and go back inside.

More of those Limeño balconies:

This is El Palacio de Gobierno de la República del Perú, the Government Palace of Peru:

Perhaps with how quickly the governments have been falling in Peru, there should be a revolving door.

I kid. I kid. Although, lately, Peru does seem to changing out governments with an almost Italian like efficiency. (And changing governments is the one things Italians have been very efficient at doing.)

At this point I am looking for a shop at which I made some purchases last trip and I know I've gone too far down this street because I end up at El Convento de San Francisco, famous for its tour-able catacombs.

I did find both of the shops I was looking for. And I made souvenir purchases at each. Two were drinkable. One was wearable.

So what is the competition Lima faces for "most photogenic city in the world"? Paris? Paris has some amazing architecture, but is any of it within the city older than the Napoleonic era? Paris just doesn't have the depth of history of Lima (or Rome) (or Athens). And the landscape of Paris, with no elevation variations of consequence is unimpressive. Paris is quite photogenic, but only in a limited way. Budapest, a city I love, suffers the same problems climbing the photogenic list, only even more so. Rome is in the conversation, definitely, as the Coliseum is older than Huaca Pucllana, by far. And Rome has St. Peter's. If only it has an ocean coastline. Rio de Janeiro probably has the most extraordinary physical setting of any city I've ever visited (San Francisco I will admit is up there, too), but it does not have the history or the interesting architecture. Beijing? Maybe if the Great Wall pierced through the downtown ...

So, for me, of the places I've been, Lima is the winner winner. Baku, Azerbaijan, is the runner-up, at least among places I've actually been. I might change my mind at some point. If only Lima had a funicular you could ride to some awesome viewpoint overlooking the city, then we would be in no-brainer territory.

Time to walk back to the hotel because my feet are tired and I don't want my right big toenail to come off, at least not until I get home. (Yes, it is looking "not right" from all the stairclimbing in Machu Picchu. The right big toe says maybe Machu Picchu should have remained on the unvisited portion of the bucket list.)