The Gran Hotel Bolívar, opened in 1924 on Plaza San Martín, was Lima's premier hotel through the first half of the 20th century — a five-storey Beaux-Arts pile with stained glass, marble staircases, and a domed glass roof over the central lobby. Every visiting head of state and celebrity stayed here from the 1920s to the 1960s; the wood-panelled lobby bar is where the catedral, an oversized double-portion pisco sour, was invented.
The hotel has slid since: rooms are tired, the corridors slightly faded. But the bar — El Bolivarcito — still works, the bartenders still make a textbook pisco sour, and at five soles it is one of the cheapest in town. Worth a drink even if you do not stay.