Sillar Route Tour

The Sillar Route is a tour full of history, living culture and adventure. We will discover why Arequipa is also known as "The White City", since when Sillar was used as a building material for houses, churches and mansions.

We will learn how this stone called Ignimbrite is extracted, how the ashlars are formed and we will meet one of the stonemasons who work hard every day and carry on a tradition that is passed down from generation to generation.

We will start at 8am heading to the Cerro Colorado district to see the most famous white sillar quarry. There we will see firsthand the ancient process of making and extracting sillar blocks and their carving carried out by the masons using simple tools such as a bar, a skipping rope and a chisel.

Next, we will take a 20-minute walk through the enigmatic Quebrada de Culebrillas, an imposing virgin quarry on a narrow path formed by the erosion of water and wind over time. At the end of the tour, we will return to the city of Arequipa.