Northern Peru
“The Egypt of the Americas”

Less visited than southern Peru, the north of the country has been called the Egypt of the Americas for its wealth of archaeological sites.

The North Coast was the cradle of several pre-Inca cultures. The Chimú, the builders of the massive fortified adobe city of Chan Chan, established an empire which by the 15th century stretched as far south as modern Lima. These renowned goldsmiths resisted the rise of the Incas until their besieged capital fell to the armies of the Inca Tupac Yupanqui in 1470.

The warlike Moche, who thrived about 1,500 years ago, left behind an extraordinary artistic legacy, portraying, in the absence of the written word, every aspect of their lives in the pictorial designs of their pottery and metalwork and the colourful friezes of the pyramidal temples they built. These consummate artists recorded what they ate, what they looked like and how they made both love and war in stylised illustrations dedicated to the worship of their pantheon of fearsome deities, and the fabulous wealth of their royal tombs is displayed today in the region’s excellent museums.