In 1535, when Francisco Pizarro founded Lima the first settlement was only made up of a little over 100 city blocks that surrounded today’s Plaza de Arma in the historical city center. Around the colonial city of Lima you could initially only find numerous adobe pyramids, fields, small settlements, plantations and lots of green.

In the following 400 years the city grew steadily, but in a quite orderly manner. The city itself grew, but also the surrounding areas were “colonized”. Fertile areas were given to the aristocracy which built their haciendas on them and cultivated the land. Slaves, natives and immigrants were brought to the capital to either serve the conquerors or work on the haciendas.

Small settlements along the coast, like Miraflores, Chorrillos or Barranco were populated and grew into fancy beach resort and spas. And of course the port of Callao, until today always an independent city, was developed to serve as Lima’s and Peru’s gateway to the world.

While you had one year after Lima’s foundation in 1536 a population of around 250 inhabitants, the population grew until 1614 to 26,400, until 1791 to 56,600. One year before Peru’s independence in 1820 the city had 64,000 citizens. In 1861 Lima’s population reached for the first time the 100,000 mark.

At the beginning of the 20th century Lima went through a process of urban renewal and more rapid expansion. Industrialization began in Lima and many fabrics were built. Migrants from the Peruvian Andes flocked into the capital to get their piece of the cake. Growth took place mostly towards the south of today’s Historical City Center, where for example the district of La Victoria emerged as a fast-growing worker's neighbourhood. Some of Lima’s surrounding haciendas and small farms were soon divided into plots and sold as building sites.

In 1925 Lima’s population had grown to 260,000 inhabitants, which more than doubled until 1940 to over 533,600. After World War II thousands of poor Andeans moved to Lima hoping for a better future and started a period of rapid growth. Increasing industrialization and modernizing led to an extraordinary migration movement from the country side to Lima and to a demographic explosion. Also many foreign immigrants found their way to the Peruvian coast. In 1951 Lima’s population reached 835,000.

In the middle of the 20th century the old colonial and magnificent city changed dramatically. Due to extreme poverty and natural disasters even more Peruvians migrated to Lima. Throughout the city huge ‘pueblos jóvenes’ (shanty towns) without proper infrastructure developed quickly.

The population in 1961 was already 1,262,100. Soon the former distant cities of Miraflores, Barranco, Chorrillos, Magdalena and the port of Callao were absorbed by the growing metropolis. The last haciendas and farms were either squatted by migrant families or broken up by an agrarian reform. In the following years hundreds of thousands poor Peruvians came to Lima to escape their living conditions. In 1981 the population was already 3,573,227 and after the years of terror in the 1980s it reached nearly 6,000,000 until 1997.

Today Metropolitan Lima is home to more than 8 Mio people. That is around one third of Peru’s total population.