Lima's attractions divide neatly into three categories: the colonial centre, the museums, and the neighbourhoods. The Centro Histórico, UNESCO-listed, is best seen on foot in a morning — the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, the catacombs of San Francisco, the wooden Moorish balconies along Jirón de la Unión. For museums, the Museo Larco in Pueblo Libre holds the best pre-Columbian gold and ceramics collection in the country; the Museo de la Nación covers 14,000 years of Peruvian history in one building; and the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI) has a fine 3,000-piece collection of Peruvian art from pre-Columbian times to the present. South of the city, the pre-Inca pilgrimage centre of Pachacámac has temples, pyramids, and an excellent site museum — an easy half-day trip.
For the living city, the smart move is to skip "sights" and walk: around Miraflores and the clifftop Malecón, where paragliders launch from the park edges; through Barranco, the bohemian old quarter with its 19th-century mansions and small galleries; and, in the centre, through the Chinese quarter on Calle Capón. The oldest surviving huaca in the city, Huaca Pucllana, is a pre-Inca adobe pyramid hemmed in on all sides by Miraflores apartment blocks — surreal and worth a visit at night, when it is lit.