Arequipa’s historic centre is best understood on foot, beginning at the Plaza de Armas, where arcades frame the Cathedral and the daily life of the city. The white and pink stone seen across the district is sillar, a volcanic building material that gives Arequipa its familiar “White City” nickname. Yet this is not simply a postcard of colonial façades. UNESCO describes the centre as a meeting of European designs and Indigenous building knowledge, formed in a valley with a much longer human history and repeatedly tested by earthquakes.
The city was founded by the Spanish in 1540 in a valley already intensively farmed by pre-Hispanic communities. The UNESCO property preserves 49 blocks of the original Spanish plan as well as 24 additional blocks dating from the colonial period and the nineteenth century. Its protected area covers 166.52 hectares. These figures help explain why a visit should not be reduced to the square alone: the historic centre is a connected urban landscape of streets, religious complexes, courtyards, bridges and houses, not one isolated monument.
