Lima's oldest mill, buried for 300 years, to open to visitors in January

Buried for more than 300 years under a busy avenue in Lima, the city's oldest flour mill will open to the public in January.

Prolima, the Municipality of Lima's office for the historic centre, plans to finish work by the end of the year so visitors can walk into the Molino de Aliaga and see its grain-grinding arches. The opening is timed for the 492nd anniversary of Lima's founding, The Art Newspaper reported.

It is a survivor from the very start of colonial Lima. Spanish conquistador Jerónimo de Aliaga, who arrived in the area with Francisco Pizarro, built the mill in 1548 on the banks of the Rimac River.

It stood close to his house. That house, the Casa de Aliaga in central Lima, has been lived in by 17 generations of the same family.

The mill ground flour for more than a century. It stayed in use until 1672, then disappeared under the growing city. It had been forgotten for more than 300 years.

Archaeologists found it by chance in 2020. Part of the surface of Alameda Chabuca Granda, a wide pedestrian promenade in central Lima, collapsed, and Prolima began to excavate underneath.

Five metres down, the team uncovered the mill's stone walls and arches. Prolima describes the dig as the largest archaeological site in any urban area in Peru.

The team also found the brick arch of the first 16th-century bridge across the Rimac. It once marked the entrance to Lima.

The finds sit at the heart of a very old story. Pizarro founded Lima, then called the City of Kings, on 18 January 1535. The city became the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru, Spain's colonial administration in South America, in 1543. Its historic centre has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a place listed for its global cultural value, since 1991.

The path to opening has not been smooth. The Municipality of Lima resumed research on the Molino de Aliaga and the nearby Arco del Puente, the Bridge Arch, in February. Peru's judiciary later ruled that the dig did not block access to the Government Palace, the president's official residence next to the site, the Municipality of Lima said.

The city's long-term plan is to join the two structures, the bridge arch and the mill, in a single visitor route.

What makes this stand out is how close it is. No museum case. Visitors will stand five metres below a street they may have walked many times, inside a mill that fed a young colonial capital.