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Chiclayo is the commercial centre of northern Peru, so it's better famed for its banks than its heritage. Nevertheless it has its attractions, even if most of the city is an urban sprawl modernizing and growing by the month. The heart of CHICLAYO is the central plaza, known as the Parque Principal , where there's a futuristic fountain that's elegantly lit at night. You'll also find the neoclassical Cathedral here, built in 1869 and with its main doorway supported by Doric columns, and the Palacio Municipal , a Republican edifice built in 1919. Along Calle San José, you'll find the Convento Franciscano Santa Maria , built in the early seventeenth century but destroyed, apart from the second cloister, by El Niño rains in 1961. But the main focus of activity is along Avenida Jose Balta , between the plaza and the town's fascinating Central Market . Packed daily with food vendors at the centre, and other stalls around the outside, this is one of the best markets in the north - and a revelation if you've just arrived in the country. The market boasts a whole section of live animals, including wild fox cubs, canaries, and even the occasional condor chick, and you can't miss the rayfish known as la guitarra hanging up to dry in the sun before being made into a local speciality - pescado seco. But the most compelling displays are the herbalists' shops, selling everything from herbs and charms to whale bones and hallucinogenic cacti.

Elsewhere in town there's the small, attractive chapel of La Véronica on Calle Torres Paz. Built at the end of the nineteenth century, its most notable feature is the altar piece of silver- and gold-leaf. The Plazuela Elías Aguirre , just around the corner from here is a small shady square which has a statue in honour of the comandante of this name, who was a local hero serving the Republicans in the Battle of Angamos.

At weekends, Chiclayo families crowd out to the beaches of Santa Rosa and La Pimentel - each well served by buses from the market area. Santa Rosa is the main fishing village on the Chiclayo coast, from where scores of big, colourful boats go out early every morning, along with the occasional caballito de tortora, reed canoes that have been used here for almost two thousand years. On Sunday afternoons, Chiclayanos congregate for the horseraces at the town's Santa Victorial Hipodromo, 2km south of the Plaza de Armas just off the Avenida Roosevelt.