Sunday in The White City

Peru’s second-largest city, Arequipa is a peaceful mountain sanctuary

Church bells echo through the Plaza de Armas, calling parishioners and visitors to mass, a tradition first transplanted to this Andean valley by Spanish conquistadors in the 1540s. The people scatter like the fluttering pigeons at their feet, scampering past the colonial arcade en route to their chosen place of worship — the city, Peru’s second-largest, is home to more than a dozen churches, temples, chapels, and other holy houses.

Chief among them is the massive Basilica Cathedral of Arequipa, arched, columned, and crowned with two distinctive towers, that runs the length of the plaza. Garci Manuel de Carbajal, a Spanish lieutenant, placed a cross on this site the day he founded the settlement, and construction commenced four years later. Inside, there is a museum of art and artifacts, but the most important story the structure tells is through its façade. Like much of Arequipa’s historical landmarks, it is built with the pale petrified volcanic lava (sillar) that gives The White City its moniker. Through the years, the landmark has been cracked, scarred, and toppled by the earthquakes that frequent the region, the most recent in 2001, and even covered in ash by a volcanic eruption in 1600. To this day, one needs only to look out at the horizon to see snow-capped Misti, Chachani, Pichu Pichu, Coropuna, or other volcanos hovering in the distance, reminders that the city built from volcanic stone only exists at the whim of those mountains and the violent tectonic shifts that created them.

Worshippers and architecture enthusiasts also flock to the Iglesia de la Compaña, a beacon of 17th century mestizo baroque style. Also made of sillar, which is porous and relatively easy to carve, the walls provide a perfect canvas for a rich tapestry of angels and saints and ornate floral carvings that stretches across the entire façade.

But there are traditions in Arequipa that predate Catholicism. A few blocks from the Plaza de Armas, just across Rio Chili in the Zemanat neighborhood, La Nueva Palomino is a family-owned picantería where generations of locals gather at communal tables for Sunday lunch. The labyrinthine open-air eatery is a living museum, where servers wear traditional straw hats and course fleece skirts. Everywhere you turn there is an exhibit paying homage to the Andean cooking tradition, from giant stone mortars for grinding corn to large clay and stone pots once used to heat and serve traditional sopas. Strings of dried peppers and maize are strewn like lights through hanging plants and displays of potatoes, cucumbers, and olluco and other root vegetables. Tables are cluttered with lidded steel pots, single servings of seafood stews, like the hearty chupe de camarones, a Sunday specialty.

And everywhere there are pitchers and glasses of purple chicha, the indigenous drink derived from corn. Children gulp chicha morada, a sweet, non-alcoholic variety that comes from boiling purple corn; while adults sip chicha guinapo, fermented black corn for a slightly darker, faintly sour low-alcohol libation. Dessert is queso helado, an Arequipa original, a frozen dish of milk, vanilla, coconut, and cinnamon.

After a cup of Peruvian coffee, you can walk off lunch at the Santa Catalina Monastery, a vast convent (20,000 square meters) built in 1579. A small city unto itself, this sprawling complex was once home to more than 450 women, both nuns and servants, who toiled alike to subsist, cooking, cleaning, sowing, reading, and praying. For nearly 400 years, the monastery was closed off from Arequipa and the world at large, but in 1970, it was opened to public. Today it is a shrine to silence and simplicity, and you can take a guided tour or opt to walk the grounds alone. There are hand-worn artifacts and priceless pieces of art. But the true treasure is the overwhelming peace that the place inspires. The day’s last light leaving the cramped and spare sleeping quarters of an aspirant nun. The gentle trickle of water running down the stone fountain where the sisters would do their laundry by hand. The breathless walk up the narrow stairway to the rooftop, from which you can look out and see white-topped Misti fade into oblivion as the sun sets over The White City.