The White City of Arequipa
April 12, 2008
As the Inca Mayta Capac passed with his soldiers through the valley in which modern Arequipa sits, some asked to stay behind. “Ari quepay”, he said. Yes, stay.
The Spanish, when they arrived in these lands, often pronounced local words badly and named their new city the Villa Hermosa de la Asunción del Valle de Arequipa. Only Arequipa stuck.
Beneath the Misti volcano, the colonial city took on a unique look. Built from the white volcanic rock found in the area, the city quickly grew to be very beautiful. Its splended white colonial buildings are still to be seen around the centre, some painted in Spanish colonial colours.
The photos attached are of the plaza, and surrounding buildings.
Photos –
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Makes me homesick. Did you get out of downtown at all?
I was staying in La Arboleda in Vallecito, and would cross the Puente de Fierro(Bolivar) into Umacollo and from there walk past the uni and then the stadium and into Yanahuara to go to the cine. I also decided I’d buy my huge house in Selva Alegre
.
Never been to Alto Selva Alegre, Miraflores or more east than the San Augustín stadium though.
Arequipa is not at all a bad place to live, I like the weather a lot, and if you don’t live next to a major road the air is better than in Lima. If I had the cash I’d switch between Lima and Arequipa with the seasons I think. That’s if I didn’t choose Piura instead, which is also excellent in every way.
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[...] Arequipa may be all kinds of beautiful, but their is an obvious problem with the quality of life there and you only need to step onto a busy street to see what it is. [...]
[...] But the Peru that Vargas was born into was different from the one we see today. The cities like Arequipa (where he was born) and Lima were dominated by criollo middle classes of mostly Spanish descent. [...]
[...] two of its four reservoirs empty. The other two hold a combined 73 million cubic metres, while the White City uses one million per [...]