Who ruled Lima?

Lima lies on the central coast of Peru, in the valley of the Rímac River, a narrow green strip of irrigated land between the Pacific and one of the driest deserts on earth. Rain almost never falls, but rivers from the Andes made farming possible, and the valley had been densely settled for thousands of years before the Spanish arrived. Francisco Pizarro chose it in 1535 because it was close to a good harbour at Callao, giving the conquerors a sea link to Panama and Spain. For almost three centuries Lima was the capital of Spain's empire in South America, and it remains by far the largest city in Peru.

The central coast was one of the earliest centres of civilisation in the Americas. Monumental temple complexes were being built in the valleys around Lima from the third millennium BCE, and the great city of Caral lies about 200 kilometres to the north. Between about 200 and 700 CE people of the Lima culture raised large adobe platforms such as Huaca Pucllana, which still stands among the apartment blocks of Miraflores. The region later came under the influence of the Wari culture of the highlands. By the 1400s the Rímac and Lurín valleys formed the Ichma polity, centred on Pachacamac, a temple and oracle visited by pilgrims from across the Andes. In the late 15th century the area was absorbed into the Inca Empire.

After the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, Francisco Pizarro founded the city on 18 January 1535 as the Ciudad de los Reyes, the City of the Kings, laying it out in a grid around a main square beside the river. Pizarro himself was murdered in Lima in 1541 by followers of his rival Diego de Almagro. In 1543 the Spanish crown made Lima the capital of the new Viceroyalty of Peru, which at first covered almost all of Spanish South America. The University of San Marcos was founded there in 1551, and the city became the seat of an archbishop and, from 1570, of a tribunal of the Inquisition.

Through the 17th century Lima was one of the richest cities in the Americas. Silver from Potosí passed through Callao, merchants controlled trade across the Pacific coast, and churches and convents filled the centre. The population included Spaniards, Indigenous people, enslaved Africans and people of mixed descent. Earthquakes repeatedly devastated it: the one of 1687 ruined much of the city, and on 28 October 1746 a far stronger quake levelled Lima while a tsunami destroyed Callao. In the 18th century the creation of new viceroyalties in Bogotá and Buenos Aires reduced Lima's reach.

Lima was a royalist stronghold during the wars of independence. José de San Martín entered the city and proclaimed the independence of Peru on 28 July 1821, but fighting continued until 1824. After decades of instability, guano exports funded new public works from the 1850s, and demolition of the old city walls began in 1868. During the War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima from 1881 to 1883 and looted its institutions.

In the 20th century, and especially from the 1940s, millions of migrants from the Andes settled on the desert around the city, building informal neighbourhoods that later became established districts. In the 1980s and early 1990s Lima suffered from economic crisis and attacks by the Shining Path insurgency, including a car bomb in Miraflores in 1992. Its historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The metropolitan area, including Callao, now has more than 10 million people, about a third of Peru's population, and is the country's political and economic centre.