How a three-month editorial residency revealed the connections between Peru’s ancient civilizations and its contemporary artistic identity.

During our recent three-month editorial residency across Peru (Spring/Summer 2026), we explored how ancient civilizations, living craft traditions, and contemporary artists together tell the country’s cultural story—one that cannot be understood through Machu Picchu alone.

Rather than documenting destinations, our editorial process relied on learning and understanding the artistic traditions that shaped each region. Museums, archaeological sites, artisan workshops, festivals, galleries, and conversations with local creators collectively provide the framework through which we interpret a destination.

During this journey of exploration, we experienced a level of cultural immersion that allows us to say without hesitation: Peru is so much more than Machu Picchu! We cannot stress enough that the country has incredible depth to offer arts, culture, and archaeology/history-minded travelers. In our three months, we’ve uncovered just as much more to do and experience as we actually managed to fit in.

Editor’s Note: This overview serves as the base for our three-month journey. Because of the vast regional diversity we uncovered, we are currently constructing a dedicated site, Enjoy-Peru.com featuring comprehensive breakdowns for every single municipality visited.

Beyond Cusco & Machu Picchu: A Different Way to Experience Peru

Cusco is a beautiful tourist town (with some really interesting, non-touristy parts around the edges), and our Machu Picchu hike was a wonderful bucket-list item we’re thrilled to have completed.

But we started with a full month in Lima, giving us enough time to dig in and understand how contemporary Peruvian art draws from thousands of years of visual tradition, particularly through artists exhibiting at Pinta Lima and regional galleries. While it isn’t huge for a city its size, between the local galleries, museums, and the Pinta Lima fair, there’s plenty to soak in for a week-long visit—far more than the typical 1 or 2 days most travelers allow.

And rather than just acclimating in Cusco before our trek, we went to Huaraz, also a hiking mecca and once a major outpost of the Wari people. We got our miles in and learned about the other largest empire in what is now Peru. The Wari are credited by many historians with creating the administrative groundwork that allowed the Inca to massively expand their empire later on.

Peru’s Artistic Heritage Begins Long Before the Inca

What Peru really offers—more than anywhere else we’ve experienced—is a chance to discover a people through their history, told via material culture: pottery, weavings, metalwork, and architecture. Everyone knows something about the Inca. It’s called the Inca Trail, after all. But while the Inca get all the press, they were just the final act in a 3,000-year-long series of cultures and civilizations, each with its own brilliant ways of living, making, and honoring their dead. The Inca ingeniously assimilated the best parts of these cultures to create the largest empire on the continent, all in a relatively short historical window.

Today, while the population is majority Catholic, these traditional ways are completely preserved—whether through manner of dress, food, drink (Chicha, anyone?!), or skilled artisans making the exact same textiles or ceramics as their ancestors did 800 to 2,000 years ago. The language, Quechua, remains vital and is often more commonly spoken than Spanish in Andean regions. Traditional dance, complete with choreography representing planting, sowing, and hunting, is kept alive and vibrant, with regular performances at festivals where even the youngest kids perform admirably.

The food seamlessly incorporates traditional pre-Inca dishes, preparations, and names (some claim ceviche originated 2,000 years ago with the Moche civilization) alongside later contributions from immigrants (like the soy sauce in lomo saltado).

If you’re into archaeology, anthropology, or any other “ology,” you’ll love visiting the coastal deserts, the plains, and the Andean highlands. You can trek through hardpack desert, snow-capped mountains, or steaming jungle. And for much of that journey, you’ll be traveling the same path—in some cases, stepping on the very stones—the Inca did at the beginning of the second millennium: the Qhapaq Ñan.

Just as the Inca themselves get most of the press, their architecture does too. Places like Sacsayhuamán and Ollantaytambo both offer exceptional “how-did-they-do-that?” moments. But Pachacámac, a massive complex of adobe bricks just south of Lima, impresses by its sheer scale, and is in turn dwarfed by Chan Chan well to the north. In all cases, the objects uncovered—mostly from burial sites—invite you to understand daily life: the worship of numerous deities, martial conquests, rituals, flora, fauna, and even individual personalities.

For our part, while we were passingly familiar with the Nazca lines, we were absolutely stunned by that culture’s pottery. Brightly colored and intricately decorated, the pots seem joyous even when depicting somber events.

Much like the treasure of King Tut is associated with all ancient Egyptian cultures, the mythical Lost City of El Dorado gives the impression that the Inca were the absolute master craftspeople in gold and silver. But touring the country, you learn that it was actually the Chavín, nearly 1,000 years earlier, who pioneered master goldsmithing. This knowledge trickled down through the subsequent Mochica and Chimú cultures, the latter being whisked away to Cusco by the Inca once their empire conquered them.

While on the subject of gold and silver: these cultures did not treat these metals as currency, but as cosmology. Their gods were the Sun and the Moon, represented by gold and silver respectively. The adornments crafted from these materials were worn to place the wearer in hierarchy and communion with the gods—a display of spiritual wealth, not monetary wealth.

Seeing Contemporary Peruvian Art Through Ancient Eyes

As arts-lovers who got our start on the craft side of the spectrum, Peru has been one of the most engaging and incredible destinations we’ve ever experienced. Yes, we loved Machu Picchu, Písac, and a lot (too many, if you ask Mrs. ArtNomads) of other architectural ruins. Visiting the smaller regional cities and taking more time in the larger hubs, we got to sort of mentally assemble the best bits from each museum, and get a much fuller understanding of history and human evolution in this part of the world… all through the power of art.

It also allowed us to see how those traditions are integrated into daily life, whether as urban art on the streets of Pisco, or as contemporary art objects. In fact, we came to better understand the historical and cultural references embedded in the work of many contemporary Peruvian artists we encountered in museums and at the Pinta Lima art fair, allowing us to appreciate their work on a much deeper level.

In fact, peeling back the layers of Peru’s ancient history through the power of art has set the blueprint for how we’re approaching the rest of our time in South America. Our goal has been sharpened: to tell the evolving story of a territory through the living, breathing endurance of its art, and share with you the best way to experience that for yourselves.

Last updated: 7/26/2026