Peru

Peru is a country in South America.

It is next to the big Pacific Ocean. Peru has a dry coast and very tall mountains. It has a hot, wet rainforest too. The capital city is called Lima.

Peru is a country in western South America, on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, just south of the Equator. People usually describe it in three parts: the dry Costa along the coast, the high Andes mountains, called the Sierra, in the middle, and the hot, rainy Amazon forest in the east.

Peru's capital is Lima, on the coast. About 34 million people lived in Peru in 2025, and nearly 3 in every 10 of them lived in and around Lima. Spanish is the main language, and Quechua and Aymara are official languages too, in the places where many people speak them.

Peru is essentially a tropical country, with its northern tip nearly touching the Equator, yet its climates and ways of life vary enormously because of the great differences in elevation and the cold Peru (Humboldt) Current offshore. Britannica describes three broad north-south regions: the arid Costa in the west, the rugged Sierra, or Andes, in the center, and Amazonia, the wet tropical forest of the Amazon Basin, in the east, which covers more than three-fifths of the country.

Peru's area is 1,285,216 square kilometers. The national statistics institute, INEI, published the first results of the 2025 census in May 2026: 34,157,732 people, making Peru the fourth most populous country in South America, after Brazil, Colombia and Argentina. Metropolitan Lima held 29.7 percent of them, and the coast as a whole held more than half.

Lima is the biggest city in Peru.

Cusco is an old city high in the mountains. Some of its walls are made of big, neat stones. Machu Picchu is a stone town on top of a steep mountain.

Lima, the capital, was founded in 1535 near the Pacific coast. More than 10 million people lived in Metropolitan Lima in 2025. High in the Andes, at about 3,400 meters, Cusco was the capital of the Inca empire. Some of its streets are still lined with Inca walls of carefully cut stone.

Machu Picchu sits on a steep mountain ridge above 2,400 meters. The Incas built it in the 1400s, with about 200 buildings and stone terraces for farming. Far to the north, Kuélap is a stone city of round buildings built by the Chachapoya people, with walls up to 19 meters high in places.

Lima was founded by Francisco Pizarro in January 1535 in the Rímac valley and became the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru, the most important city in Spain's South American lands; San Marcos University there dates from 1551. INEI counted 10,129,708 people in Metropolitan Lima in 2025. Cusco, at about 3,400 m, was redesigned in the 15th century, after more than 3,000 years of earlier settlement, and became the capital of Tawantinsuyu, the Inca Empire. UNESCO notes that its plan and its walls of finely cut granite or andesite still survive, with baroque buildings built over them after the Spanish conquest.

Machu Picchu, built in the 15th century on a ridge more than 2,400 m above sea level, has about 200 structures divided into farming and residential areas. It was abandoned after the Spanish conquest and became known to the outside world in 1911; UNESCO listed it in 1983. Kuélap, a stone complex built between the 11th and 16th centuries by the pre-Inca Chachapoya culture at about 3,000 m, stretches for almost 600 m behind walls that reach 19 m in places.

The coast of Peru is very dry.

It hardly ever rains there. The Andes mountains are very tall. Some peaks have snow all year. Lake Titicaca is a big lake high in the mountains.

Peru's coast is one of the driest places on Earth, even though it is not very hot: the average temperature is about 19 °C in winter and 22 °C in summer. The Andes block rain coming from the Amazon side, and a cold ocean current flows along the shore.

The Andes are highest in central Peru. Huascarán, the country's tallest mountain, is 6,768 meters high. In the south lies Lake Titicaca, shared with Bolivia, at 3,810 meters. East of the mountains, the Amazon rainforest is hot and wet, and the Amazon River has its headwaters in Peru's Andes.

The Peruvian Andes formed as the South American Plate overrode the Nazca Plate; they are geologically young and still rising, with frequent earthquakes. The Cordillera Blanca in central Peru holds Huascarán, 6,768 m, the country's highest peak; UNESCO counts 27 snow-capped peaks above 6,000 m in Huascarán National Park, the heart of the world's highest tropical mountain range. In the south the Andes become the Puna, high tablelands at about 4,000–5,000 m, and Lake Titicaca, at 3,810 m, is the world's highest navigable body of water.

The Costa is dry because the Andes block rain-bearing winds from the Amazon, air from the South Pacific high-pressure system brings little rain, and the cold Peru Current adds little moisture; winter fogs called garúa still support some plants. In Cusco, at 3,399 m, January averages 11 °C and July 8 °C, but the daily range is often more than 22 °C. Iquitos, in Amazonia, gets more than 2,200 mm of rain a year. Irregularly, about once a decade, El Niño replaces the cold current with warm water, bringing heavy rain to the desert and drought to the southern highlands.

Llamas and alpacas live high in the mountains.

Lots of grass grows there. Big condors live there too. In the rainforest there are monkeys, colorful birds and giant otters.

On the high grasslands of the Andes, called the Puna, live four animals of the camel family: the llama, the alpaca, the vicuña and the guanaco. The vicuña nearly died out in the 1960s, but it has made a strong comeback. In Huascarán National Park, Andean condors and spectacled bears live in the mountains too.

The ocean off Peru's coast is full of fish. Sea lions live on quiet parts of the coast, and pelicans and other seabirds crowd the islands offshore. In the rainforest of Manu National Park there are jaguars, giant otters, 13 kinds of primates, such as monkeys, and more than 800 kinds of birds.

Peru's Puna grasslands, at about 4,000–5,000 m, are home to the llama, alpaca, vicuña and guanaco, all native to the region. In Huascarán National Park the vicuña, close to extinction in the 1960s, has recovered, which UNESCO calls one of South America's most spectacular conservation successes; the park also shelters the vulnerable spectacled bear, the endangered Andean mountain cat, the Andean condor and the Queen of the Andes, a plant famous for its giant flower spike.

The cold coastal waters support anchovies and larger fish such as tuna and marlin, sea lions, and seabirds including pelicans, cormorants and gannets; the endangered Humboldt penguin reaches as far north as the Ballestas Islands. Manu National Park, which spans the eastern Andean slope from about 350 m to above 4,000 m, records at least 200 mammal species and more than 800 bird species, including the giant otter, 13 primate species and eight wild cats such as the jaguar and puma.

About 34 million people were counted in Peru in 2025.

Most people speak Spanish. Many people speak Quechua or Aymara too. Many meals in the mountains have potatoes. Ceviche is a dish made with fish and lime or lemon juice.

The 2025 census found more than half of Peru's people living along the coast, and nearly 3 in 10 in and around Lima. Spanish is spoken across the country. Quechua, the language the Incas spread, and Aymara, spoken near Lake Titicaca, are official too where many people speak them, and many other languages are spoken in the Amazon forest.

Food changes from place to place. In the highlands, meals often have potatoes, other root vegetables and quinoa. On the coast, cooks use rice, cassava, tomatoes, spicy peppers and fresh seafood. Ceviche, raw fish marinated in lemon with chili and salt, is eaten all over Peru.

INEI's 2025 census found more than half of Peruvians on the coast and 29.7 percent in Metropolitan Lima. Britannica estimates that mestizos (people of mixed Indigenous and European descent) make up about three-fifths of the population and Quechua people between one-fifth and one-fourth, with smaller Aymara, European, Japanese-descended and other communities; Chinese and Japanese immigrants arrived after independence. Spanish is the official language, and Quechua and Aymara have official use where they are widely spoken. More than three-fourths of Peruvians are Roman Catholic and between one-tenth and one-fifth are Evangelical Christians.

Cooking varies by region: highland meals rely on potatoes and other Andean tubers such as oca and ulluco, grains such as quinoa, and llama, guinea pig, chicken or fish, while coastal criollo cooking uses rice, cassava, peppers and seafood. In 2023 UNESCO added the practices around ceviche, raw fish marinated in lemon with chili and salt, to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list; recipes differ from region to region and are usually passed on within families.