Cerro San Cristóbal

This guide to Cerro San Cristobal in Lima follows the 1927 replacement of the wooden cross that had watched over the city since Pizarro's day, an idea a Franciscan friar named Francisco Aramburu said came to him in a dream. It traces how builder Oscar Zagazeta Valderrama took on the job before fundraising was complete, covering the shortfall himself as his unpaid crew hauled iron and mixed cement up the steep hillside. It follows the crowd that climbed for the cross's lighting ceremony on December 23, 1928, so large that police could not keep the summit road clear.