Palacio Municipal de Lima

This guide to the Palacio Municipal de Lima follows General Cesar Canevaro's scramble to save the city's oldest documents when Chilean troops occupied Lima in 1881, then turns to a 1923 fire that gutted the building and left the municipality in borrowed offices for a generation. You'll hear how Polish architect Ricardo de Jaxa Malachowski, who came to Lima expecting to stay two years and never left, shaped what rose in its place. Look up at the carved wooden balconies over the plaza where the original building burned.