Callao/Lima, Peru

The ancient city centre
The Presidential Palace and Torre Tagle 
Miraflores and Barranco

Find MSC World Cruise

Callao/Lima

The City of Kings

Lima retains a certain elegance, particularly in its colonial centre. The city still brims with culture and history, though it may not be obvious at first.

Top of its attractions are some excellent museums – the best of which should definitely be visited before setting off for Machu Picchu or any of Peru's other great Inca ruins – as well as fine Spanish churches in the centre, and some distinguished mansions in the wealthy suburbs of Barranco and Miraflores.  
 
First of all, while enjoying your MSC World Cruise, you can visit Lima Centro with all its splendid architectural attractions, the neighbourhood is very much a centre of Limeños’ daily life. The main axis is formed by the parallel streets – Jirón de la Unión and Jirón V Carabaya – connecting the grand squares of the Plaza San Martín and Plaza Mayor. Here the roads are narrow and busy, bringing together many of the city’s office workers with slightly downmarket shops and their workers. There are many fine buildings from the colonial and Republican eras, overhung with ornate balconies, yet apart from a few – notably the Presidential Palace and Torre Tagle – these are in a poor state of repair. 
 
To the north you’ll find the slightly run-down, but fascinating Rimac suburb, home to the city’s bullring. South of the two main plazas, some lavish parks and galleries are within walking distance. South of here, along and just inland from the ocean clifftop, the modern centre of Miraflores, where most tourists stay, buzzes with shoppers by day and partiers by night. 
 
East along the coast a few kilometres, what was once a separate seaside suburb and artists’ quarter, Barranco, still boasts both tradition and a vibrant atmosphere.
 
This is just one of the fantastic destinations of our cruise around the world: MSC World Cruise 2020!

Must see places in Callao/Lima

Discover our excursions

    Peru

    A Welcoming Country
    A Welcoming Country

    Peru offers an incredible variety of landscapes: the arid plains of Nazca and the mysterious Nazca Lines, two of the world's deepest canyons near Arequipa, the country's second largest city, the lush rainforest in the East, and 2.000 km of vast coastal desert that is in reality just one, huge beach.

    With an MSC cruise you can explore this extremely welcoming country, where there is always time for a chat, a Peruvian ceviche – national fish dish – or having a drink together. 
     
    Peru also boasts temples and stone cities built by the Incas (the most famous being Machu Picchu) and there is evidence of even older civilisations that over the millennia have lived between the Andes and the Amazon rainforest. 
     
    An MSC World Cruise will allow you feel the pulse of a nation that offers so much to its visitors: lost crumbling citadels, sacred lagoons with therapeutic properties, Inca necropolises,colonies of penguins and sea lions, megalithic walls, tropical rain forests and bustling cities. 

    Lima, the capital, is a bustling modern metropolis that effortlessly manages to mix traditional Peruvian heritage with the ostentation of the XXI century.