The city centre of Chachapoyas is a compact colonial grid around the Plaza de Armas, small enough to walk completely in an hour. The streets are quiet, the architecture is well-preserved, and the pace is genuinely unhurried — Chachapoyas sees enough tourists to have restaurants and guesthouses, but not enough to have changed its essential character as a working Andean provincial capital.
The market near the plaza is the best place to get a sense of the local economy — cloudforest produce, Andean staples, and the occasional stall selling Chachapoyas honey (the region's bees work at altitude in flower-rich cloudforest and produce an unusually intense honey). The Calle Amazonas and the streets around the Plaza de Armas hold the best concentration of restaurants and the few bars that serve the traveller community.