Discover Arequipa

Arequipa sits at around two thousand three hundred metres in southern Peru, under three volcanoes, and it is built almost entirely out of sillar — a white volcanic stone that reflects the very strong high-altitude light and gives the place its nickname, the white city.

The city centre is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and its most remarkable building is the Santa Catalina monastery: a walled convent covering two hectares in the middle of town, painted in deep blue and burnt orange, which functioned as a private city for enclosed nuns for four hundred years and only opened to the public in 1970. El Misti stands almost symmetrically above the city, and Arequipeños have a long-standing habit of describing themselves as slightly separate from the rest of Peru.

The region’s other draw is the Colca Canyon, three hours north, which is roughly twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and still farmed on pre-Inca terraces; Andean condors ride the thermals out of it in the early morning at the Cruz del Condor. Cotahuasi, further out, is deeper again and almost unvisited. Arequipa’s picanterías — traditional lunch houses serving a fixed rotation of dishes by the day of the week — are a genuine local institution, and rocoto relleno is the dish to try.