🇵🇪 Peru · The Highlands and the Andes
Huancayo is the great city of Peru's central highlands, capital of the Junín region and the heart of the fertile Mantaro valley, at around 3,270 meters. It's a commercial, lively and very Peruvian city, less touristy than Cusco or Arequipa, which makes it ideal for anyone after a more authentic trip through the Andes. Its big draw is the valley around it: a run of craft villages, colonial churches, farmland scenery and curious rock formations.
The region is famous for its crafts -textiles, engraved gourds, Wanka silverwork, wood carving- and for its hearty cooking, with dishes such as papa a la huancaína (which was born right here), pachamanca and trout. On Sundays, the Sunday fair on Avenida Huancavelica fills the city with food stalls, produce and crafts, and it's one of the best ways to feel the local pulse. A few minutes away are attractions like the Torre Torre formations, the Parque de la Identidad Wanka and the Santa Rosa de Ocopa monastery.
Another of its emblems runs on rails. Huancayo is one end of one of the highest railways in the world (the Ferrocarril Central, which links it to Lima) and the origin of the much-loved 'Tren Macho' to Huancavelica, which crosses the valley over bridges and through tunnels. The base is always the city of Huancayo, well connected by road to Lima (about 6-7 hours on the Carretera Central). Give yourself time to acclimatize to the altitude, pack warm clothes for the cool nights and dive into Wanka cooking.
Huancayo is the main center of the Mantaro valley, the historic territory of the Wanka people, who resisted Inca expansion before being absorbed into the empire. Under colonial rule the valley filled with towns and churches and became key to supplying Lima. Huancayo grew with the Ferrocarril Central, one of the highest railways in the world, opened in the late 19th century, which connected it to the capital. More detail on the history page.
Read the full history ↓The central highlands of the Mantaro valley: setting of the battle that opened the way to independence, land of the Huancas, of the highest railway in the world, of mining and of the coffee-growing central jungle.
Read the history of Junín →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before Huancayo was a city, the Mantaro valley was the territory of the Wanka (or Huanca) people, a warlike farming society that occupied this broad, fertile basin in the central highlands. The Wankas lived in numerous settlements scattered across the valley, many of them up on the nearby heights for defensive reasons, and they were known for their independent character and their organization into curacazgos, something that deeply marked their relationship with the great Andean powers.
When the Incas expanded into the central highlands in the 15th century, the Wankas put up prolonged resistance before being absorbed into the Tahuantinsuyo, which imposed on the valley its administration, its roads (the Qhapaq Ñan among them) and centers such as Hatun Xauxa (Jauja). That tense relationship with Cusco explains a key episode of the conquest: when the Spanish arrived, many Wankas allied with them against the Incas, seeking to shake off Cusco's rule, and contributed decisive warriors and resources in the first campaigns.
That Wanka heritage is still very much alive in the identity of Huancayo and its valley. It's celebrated in the Parque de la Identidad Wanka, in dances such as the huaylarsh -declared Cultural Heritage of the Nation in 2005- in the crafts and in a strong local pride in a culture that never stopped asserting its own personality. To get to know Huancayo is, to a large extent, to look into this Wanka world that precedes and outlasts both Incas and Spaniards.
Under colonial rule the Mantaro valley filled with towns, haciendas and churches, and became key territory for supplying food to the cities of the central viceroyalty, in particular Lima, by way of the Carretera Central. Jauja, at the northern end of the valley, played a prominent part: it was one of the first settlements founded by the Spanish, in 1534, and for a brief period served as capital before that role passed to Lima the following year.
One of the region's great colonial legacies is the Santa Rosa de Ocopa monastery, founded by the Franciscans in 1725 near Concepción. From there the missions set out into the central jungle to evangelize the Amazonian peoples, an undertaking that lasted centuries and left a unique documentary record. The monastery keeps an extraordinary library, with more than 25,000 old volumes, and a museum with objects, religious art and pieces brought back by the missionaries, which make it an essential visit in the valley.
In parallel, Huancayo itself -then a minor town in the valley- grew on the back of trade: as early as 1572 the corregidor Jerónimo de Silva set up a barter fair for the indigenous people of the area, ratified in 1578 by viceroy Francisco de Toledo. That fair, the direct ancestor of today's Sunday fair, is one of the oldest and most continuous commercial traditions in Peru, and it shows that Huancayo's mercantile character has roots going back more than four centuries.
The Sunday fair on Avenida Huancavelica, one of Huancayo's strongest markers of identity, has a much longer history than its current location suggests. It was formally born in 1572, when the Spanish corregidor Jerónimo de Silva set up a barter market among the indigenous peoples of the valley, ratified in 1578 by viceroy Toledo as part of his policy of reducciones and colonial reordering. For its first centuries it ran in the Plaza Huamanmarca and later on the Calle Real, until in the 1980s it was moved to Avenida Huancavelica, where it grew into the giant weekly market that today draws thousands of traders.
Alongside that commercial tradition, the Mantaro valley developed one of the most celebrated dance forms in Peru: the huaylarsh. Its roots lie in the farm work of the Wanka civilization -the term comes from the Quechua huaylla or huaylluy, 'good pasture' or 'to love tenderly'- and in its traditional form it imitates the movements of sowing and harvesting potatoes, maize and other Andean crops. In the mid-20th century the musician Zenobio Dagha Sapaico, from Chupuro, gave rise to a mestizo, more agile version of the huaylarsh -premiered in 1949 with the piece 'Mi Tierra Wanka'- which spread through traditional orchestras such as the one he himself founded, Juventud Huancaína, and which is today the most widespread form of the dance.
The huaylarsh was declared Cultural Heritage of the Nation in 2005, and every Ash Wednesday (after the carnivals) the Día Nacional del Huaylarsh Wanka is celebrated, with contests and performances that fill the valley's streets with music and color. Together with the Sunday fair, it's one of the expressions that best sum up the vitality of contemporary Huanca popular culture.
Huancayo's modern history is tied to the railway. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the Ferrocarril Central del Perú was built, an engineering feat linking Lima with the central highlands and crossing the cordillera through very high passes by way of dozens of tunnels, bridges and switchbacks, a work associated with the engineer Henry Meiggs. For a long time it was considered the highest standard-gauge railway in the world, and it was decisive in connecting Huancayo with the capital and energizing the region's mining and farming economy.
Another much-loved railway also starts in Huancayo: the Ferrocarril Huancayo-Huancavelica, popularly known as the 'Tren Macho'. Opened in stages during the 20th century, it runs along the valley parallel to the Mantaro and Ichu rivers, crossing colonial bridges, hot springs and small Andean towns on a route that originally covered around 128 kilometers. Its nickname and its fame come from its tenacity in keeping going despite the difficulties of the terrain, and it has become a symbol of the region's identity.
In recent years the service has gone through stages of suspension and relaunch: it reopened in March 2023 with free travel on a temporary basis, running on a shorter section (about 57 km, roughly two hours) while a full modernization project announced for the coming years moves ahead, with planned investment of hundreds of millions of dollars. These trains made Huancayo a communications hub of the central highlands and a meeting point between the coast, the Andes and the jungle; today, beyond their practical value, they're part of the area's tourist appeal, though it's always worth confirming the current operation of each service beforehand.
Through the 20th century, Huancayo consolidated its role as capital of the department of Junín and as the great service city of the central highlands, overtaking other centers in the valley such as Jauja or Concepción in population and commercial importance. The push from the railway, the arrival of the paved Carretera Central and the growth of mining at Cerro de Pasco and La Oroya reinforced Huancayo as a hub for transport and trade between Lima, the central highlands and the jungle.
The city also went through hard times, such as the years of political violence in the 1980s and 1990s, which affected much of the Peruvian central highlands and drove migration into the city from the rural areas of the valley and the heights. That process, combined with steady commercial growth -symbolized by the enormous Sunday fair- turned Huancayo into a sprawling, dynamic city with a strong mestizo identity combining Wanka roots, colonial inheritance and a very active urban life.
Today Huancayo is one of the most important cities in Peru's central Andes, less oriented to mass tourism than Cusco or Arequipa, but with a cultural, culinary and scenic heritage of its own: the Mantaro valley with its craft villages, the Ocopa monastery, the Torre Torre formations and a Wanka identity that shows itself every Sunday at the fair and at every patron saint festival on the regional calendar.