Lima Cathedral

Lima Cathedral tickets: which one to buy

A modest ticket covers the cathedral and its museum of religious art in the rooms behind the nave; the neighbouring Archbishop's Palace, with its carved wooden balcony, is a separate ticket and a separate tour. Audio guides are included in some versions and guides wait inside for a fixed fee. City walking tours of the historic centre include the cathedral and cost several times the entry, usually adding the Plaza Mayor, the Cordano tavern and the San Francisco catacombs;

those catacombs are the better underground visit, so pairing them is the standard route. Entry is free during mass. The cathedral is on the Plaza Mayor, the centre of colonial Lima, and the square is heavily policed and safe by day. Queues are short except when a cruise group arrives from Callao. The ticket desk is inside the right-hand door of the west front, and the museum entrance is at the far end of the nave.

Visiting Lima Cathedral: what to see

Pizarro laid the first stone in 1535 and reportedly carried the first timber himself; the present building was raised between 1602 and 1797 after earthquakes destroyed its predecessors, and it has been repaired after every major quake since. The facade is Renaissance, the interior a wide hall of three aisles with fourteen side chapels and choir stalls carved by Pedro Noguera in the seventeenth century, among the finest in the Americas. Just inside the entrance, a mosaic-lined chapel holds a casket said to contain the remains of Pizarro himself;

the bones were reidentified in 1977 after a lead box with the right inscription was found in the crypt, replacing a body that had been displayed for eighty years and was someone else. The museum behind holds colonial paintings, silver and vestments, and the crypt below is open on the same ticket. The cathedral's bell towers were rebuilt after the 1746 earthquake in a deliberately lighter timber-and-plaster technique known locally as quincha, designed to shake rather than fall.

Lima Cathedral opening hours and the best time to go

Open Monday to Saturday from mid-morning to late afternoon and on Sunday afternoons, with services taking priority. Lima's grey sea fog sits over the centre from June to October and the interior is dark in those months; December to March is bright and hot. The Plaza Mayor holds a changing of the palace guard at midday that draws a crowd. The cathedral is on the flat and easy to combine with the rest of the centre on foot.

Dress modestly. Photography without flash is allowed. Allow an hour for cathedral and museum. The Convent of San Francisco with its bone-filled catacombs is ten minutes away and is the obvious next stop. The square is floodlit in the evening and the cathedral front is the backdrop for the daily flag ceremony at the government palace opposite.