Arequipa Audio Tours

Arequipa earns the name Ciudad Blanca not for any purity of character but for sillar, the white volcanic stone quarried from the three volcanoes that frame the city: El Misti, Chachani, and Pichu Pichu. Nearly everything in the historic centre was built from it, giving the streets a luminous quality in the afternoon light that photographers return to repeatedly. The Plaza de Armas here is one of the finest in South America, with a cathedral that stretches the full width of one side, carved from the same white stone as everything else and looking, from the right angle, like something from a fever dream of colonial architecture.

Arequipa sits at 2,335 metres in a highland valley, high enough to require a day of acclimatization for visitors arriving from sea level but not as brutal as Cusco or La Paz.

The city has a fierce regional identity, a streak of independence that has produced more than its share of Peruvian presidents and intellectuals, and a cuisine built around rocoto peppers and dried potato techniques that developed in the Andean highlands over centuries. The Santa Catalina Monastery, a walled city within the city covering two entire city blocks, is the single most extraordinary building in the country.