Arequipa

Arequipa's historic center is built almost entirely from sillar, a white volcanic stone quarried from the three volcanoes that overlook the city, including the still-active El Misti. The stone reflects sunlight distinctively enough that the city earned the nickname "the White City" (la Ciudad Blanca), and UNESCO recognized the resulting architectural character — Baroque colonial buildings unlike anything found in Peru's other major cities — as a World Heritage Site in 2000.

Santa Catalina Monastery, the city's single most significant attraction, is a walled convent covering nearly a full city block, functioning almost like a self-contained small town within Arequipa — colorful painted streets in ochre, blue, and white, courtyards, a cemetery, and cells that once housed dozens of nuns, some from wealthy families who brought servants and elaborate furnishings with them into religious life, a detail that surprises many visitors expecting austere simplicity.

Colca Canyon, roughly twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, sits within realistic day-trip or overnight-tour distance and offers one of the more reliable chances in South America to see Andean condors in flight, particularly at the Cruz del Cóndor viewpoint during the early morning hours when the birds ride thermal air currents rising from the canyon depths.

The city's three surrounding volcanoes — El Misti, Chachani, and Pichu Pichu — give Arequipa a dramatic natural backdrop visible from numerous viewpoints around the city, including Yanahuara, a neighborhood whose plaza offers one of the most photographed views combining the white colonial architecture with the volcanic peaks behind it.

Arequipa tends to move at a notably calmer pace than Cusco, Peru's more heavily touristed historic city, and rewards travelers with enough time in the country to look beyond the essential Machu Picchu circuit — a genuine architectural and natural-landscape counterpoint that many Peru itineraries skip entirely, to their own loss.