Private Arequipa City Tour: Juanita Mummy and Santa Catalina

★★★★★★★★★★ 5.00 (1 reviews)

Free cancellation

1/6

Duration5h

GroupPrivate

LanguagesEN · ES

PickupAt your hotel

See Arequipa's white volcanic architecture and its most famous mummy without arranging transport or a guide yourself.

A private city tour of Arequipa with a professional guide and driver takes you through the White City's major sites in five hours. You visit Santa Catalina Monastery, built in 1579 with white volcanic rock and designed in colonial style; the Museum of Andean Sanctuaries, where the Juanita Mummy is preserved; and the colonial suburbs of Cayma, Sabandia and Yanahuara for views of the city and its volcanoes. Hotel pickup and drop-off are included, as is lunch at a local Picanteria restaurant. A minimum of two people per booking is required.

Step-by-step itinerary

Private city tour and lunch

Meet guide and driver at hotel
Visit Monastery of Santa Catalina
Explore Juanita Mummy Museum
Tour colonial suburbs
Enjoy traditional Arequipan lunch
Transfer back to hotel

The Experience

Your guide and driver meet you at your hotel in the morning to start the tour. Santa Catalina Monastery is the first stop—a complex built in 1579 from white volcanic rock called Silla, with its own streets, plazas and rooms that form a complete religious world enclosed within its walls. The monastery served as a cloister for nuns from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries and stands as a work of colonial architecture.

Next is the Museum of Andean Sanctuaries, where the Juanita Mummy is on display from May through December. Juanita was a teenage girl sacrificed by the Incas to the mountain gods on Ampato Mountain, and her preservation in the museum is so complete that she became the most famous mummy in the Andes. During January to April, when preservation work takes place, another mummy is displayed instead. After the museum, the tour moves through the colonial suburbs of Cayma, Sabandia and Yanahuara, where you get views of the city and its volcanoes.

Lunch happens at a Picanteria, a traditional local restaurant serving Arequipian food. Vegetarian options are available if you request them at booking. After lunch, your driver transfers you back to your hotel, ending the five-hour tour.

What’s included

Hotel pickup and drop-off.
a professional English-speaking guide.
a private van with driver.
local taxes.
lunch at a traditional Picanteria restaurant.

Good to know

Easy physical levelPublic transport nearbyInfants must sit on laps

Operated by Cultural Immersion Travel Peru E.I.R.L.

Is this one for you?The five-hour pace keeps the major sites—monastery, mummy museum and colonial views—inside a single morning or afternoon without rushing between them. Your guide handles the route and timing, so you move through Arequipa without managing transport or entry logistics yourself.