In this bucolic landscape the people had from time immemorial the tutelary volcanoes.

In the first scene of this story we see a picturesque valley scattered with small terraced fields, at the foot of the three volcanoes and in the middle of one of the driest deserts in the world. People had been living in this extended oasis from time immemorial -several thousand years no doubt -indigenous ethnic groups (Collaguas, Lupacas, Puquinas, and others), as well as Quechua who were the dominating group at the time the bearded Conquistadors arrived from Spain.

At the beginning of November 1533, Pizarro and his men sacked Cusco. End of first act -though much remains to be told -of the dramatic tableau known as the "Conquest of the Incas". The new Governor of Peru and Conquistador realized that a city was necessary between the imperial capital which he had just subdued and the territory of the Charcas, to the south west he had to conquer before he could share the new dominions with his partner and the rival Diego de Almagro.

Almagro and his men passed back and forth through the valley of Arequipa during the conquest of Chile, Pedro de Valdivia took a stand here and finally defeated the Araucanos. Pizarro also visited this pleasant valley and decided to found a city there. Shortly beforehand, the Spaniards had founded a town at the mouth of the river Camana, but had been decimated by malaria and had been obliged to move to the valley of the Chile, strategically located in the desert between the sea and the highlands.

On the orders of Pizarro, on the 15th of August 1540, the day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, the Lieutenant Governor Manuel de Carvajal founded Arequipa in the pleasant oasis and gave it the name Villa Hermosa. He was accompanied by a hundred Conquistadors, some women from Spain, two Dominican friars, a priest and perhaps some slaves. The Yarabayas and other inhabitants of the area must have been witnessed this scene with a mixture of astonishment, concern, admiration and anger.

On the Main Square of Villa Hermosa, where the pillory was erected, the founder and his assistants set out the sites for the church, the council building, the prison, the custom house and the governor's house. The 49 blocks where the new inhabitants would build their houses were also marked out with cord. A Royal Decree issued by the Emperor Charles the 5th one year afterwards ordered that the town "shall be called the city of Arequipa and shall enjoy the preeminence, prerogatives and privileges that are its right as a city". The Emperor granted a coat of arms which included his name: Karolus. The original street plan to which has to be added the early district of San Lazaro, was subsequently modified as new religious orders arrived and needed space for their churches and monasteries.

THE CITY OF SILLAR
What type of town did its initial inhabitants think they would built -and, indeed, did build -in those first years and which they quickly referred to as the "very noble and loyal city of Arequipa"? The idea was to build using boulders taken from the river bed ("between each church a wall of stone and mortar" goes the old Spanish refrain, still remembered by the one or two of the city's more senior matrons), roofed with straw and, later, tiles.

Thus the city began: it looked like any Spanish town on this or the other side of the ocean. Only a small detail gave it a certain originality: the first master builders of the city -Bernardo de Avila and then Gaspaer Baez, always assisted by Indian masons and labor -began building the simple facades of houses and churches from a lightweight white stone obtained from a quarry in Chilina, and which apparently had never been used by the pre-Hispanic people: the famous sillar.

Sillar is a volcanic lava or tuff produced by eruptions thousands of years ago, most of which came from the imposing Chachani volcano and is found in the much used quarry at Añashuayco and others in the area. Sillar comes in various shades of white, although pink sillar is also found and was used for the archbishop's palace. It is a brittle material, easy to work and strong enough for walls, arches, vaults and cupolas, elements in which the material is under compression. Thanks to its porosity it also possesses thermal and acoustic properties and ornamental carvings made from it make much use of its characteristic semi transparency.

Sillar, the skill of its builders and the stubbornness of its people over more than four hundred years give Arequipa its architectural glory. To all these and, paradoxically, to the violence of the first earthquakes that shook the city in 1582, 1600 and in 1604. Because of the earthquakes Arequipa became, after the 17th century, the city of sillar.

During that century the vaulted ceiling made from sillar, already used in the city's churches, was successfully introduced into civil architecture.

The city prospered as the capital of a region in which wines and spirits were produced in neighboring valleys and new mines established.

At the same time the so-called Arequipa School of architecture arose, with its distinctive way of using sillar, with its distinctive way of using sillar, which continue until the end of the 19th century and can still be seen.

The thick sillar walls -over five feet thick in some churches - were built hollow, with load-bearing material in the center to give greater strength, support the weight of the roof and resist earthquakes. The sillar blocks were united with a classical sand and lime mortar although in some cases -the historic bridges, for example -thousands of egg whites and cactus gum were used to bind the mortar. The ornamental profusion of this architectural style combines baroque with Christian symbolism and heraldic devices from the indigenous pantheon.

The city of Arequipa, home to a large Spanish population until the end of the vice regal period, produced a mestizo architectural style that has left a genuine mark. The walls that have survived are spectacular: the facades of the churches la Compañia and Santo Domingo (the oldest of these churches), La Merced, and San Francisco, as well as the Tristan, Moral, La Moneda and Chaves de La Rosa mansions. The numerous details of the urban landscape are to be found in concentrated form in the magic of the convent of Santa Catalina, a model and compendium of the evolution of Arequipa architecture.

AREQUIPA`S HERITAGE
The early city was replaced by the splendor of mestizo baroque and then, affected by earthquakes and changes in fashion, by the neoclassical style that characterizes the 19th century. The most representative monument of this era is undoubtedly the Cathedral, with its lateral cloisters and ranks of columns which seems to belong to the city of law and of rebellious republicans that the city produced at that romantic period. One can also speak of a sort of forced mestizo neoclassicism, created by the sensitivity of indigenous builders and the peculiarities of sillar. But the city did not shine as white at that time as its Cathedral. Until 1970, when a municipal by law ordered the facades of the historic center to be cleaned, the walls of mansions, churches and monasteries were painted ochre, red, blue and other bright colors, with the sillar moldings and carvings picked out in white..