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The balconies of Lima

The balconies of Lima, which were built during the viceroyalty of Peru and during the Republic and still exist today, mainly in the historic center of Lima (districts of Lima and Rímac), are part of the architectural heritage of the capital city of Peru.

In the historic center of Lima there are balconies everywhere, which give the city a very original appearance. The balconies, along with the other architectural monuments of Lima, explain why Unesco declared the old part of the city as a World Heritage Site.

Image Caption: The facade of the House of Osambela located in the Conde de Superunda shred. Its Louis XVI style balconies adorned with garlands are appreciated.

Historical overview Based on the construction agreements (recorded on the date the building was finished), the historian Antonio San Cristóbal distinguishes two periods in the construction of the balconies.

First period: On the fronts of the Lima houses of the 16th and early 17th centuries, the flat open balconies and the open and elongated galleries were elevated along the entire facade of the street. Second period: At the beginning of the 17th century, closed balconies began to appear, imposing their dominance from the 1620s onwards and gradually replacing the flat open balconies.

Image Caption: The corner balcony, of the Casa del Oidor from the beginning of the 18th century, is the only one from the vice royal factory that remains in the Plaza Mayor of Lima.

Types of balconies Open balconies: They only had the guardrail on the platform, but did not have the raised enclosure between the guardrail and the deck. Its height was a yard and a quarter, its width fit a chair inside, and in some cases there was a wooden dust guard to protect the balcony from the rain.

Raised balconies: They do not protrude from the facade wall, and the wall opening is torn down to the floor of the room, but there is no projecting exterior platform. The guardrail closes the lower part of the bay without protruding into a mass in front of the façade.

Box balconies: This arises as an external derivation of the raised wooden corridors elevated in the patios of Lima, varying the enclosure mode throughout the visible front but not in the structure of the floor, the roof and the supports. It was attributed the same width as the raised corridors or almost equivalent to the width of a yard and a quarter.

Long box balconies: Initially beginning as open corridors, the introduction of glass transformed them and differentiated them into two types: open balconies in multi-person houses and corridor balconies in single-neighbor houses.

Image Caption: Facade of the Torre Tagle Palace, with carved stone porticoes and arches and artistic carved wooden Moorish balconies.

Characteristics Before the 1687 earthquake, the box balconies were built in three superimposed layers.

Guardrail: Basically made up of closed or open boards, and a series of balusters or vases. Lattices: Interlocking cedar rods. Balusters: Joined with arches, sometimes a narrow strip of small boards followed, on which the planked corbels that received the clay cake from the roof were placed.

Structure The balcony platform was similar to that of the corridors and was made up of small squares protruding from the wall, sometimes on corbels, which supported a beam on which the vertical supports of the roof were placed.

The basic structure of the Lima balcony remained unchanged despite its evolution. The external panel covered the structural armor with the assembly of carpentry works typical of Peruvian vice royal architecture.

Image Caption: Original and typical balcony from the seventeenth century, belonging to the house where the Museum of Bullfighting Art is located on Matavilela street (block 3 of the Conde de Superunda shred) in the historic center of Lima.

Conservation Between 1996 and 1998, the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima promoted a unique program, within the Recovery Plan of the Historic Center of Lima, to recover and return these valuable components of the urban scene to their original state.

This program consisted of inviting diverse public and private institutions to "adopt" a balcony, which meant assuming the investment necessary for its conservation and restoration. The global amount of the investment reached $800,000 dollars in this period.

Image Caption: Richly decorated balcony of the Archbishop's Palace in Lima.