Museo del Ejercito Real Felipe

I flew in the morning from Cusco to Lima, and had about 12 hours before my flight to the US took off, so I had my friend Jose, the tour guide that took my to Nasca my first day in town, show me a bit of Lima. The first place that we visited was the Museo del Ejercito Real Felipe, a huge pentagonal-shaped 18th century fort that is used at present as a huge military museum.

As with so many of my other experiences in Peru, I was so surprised at the immediacy of the museum, the feeling that you are actually looking at a thing rather than observing it through glass or from a respectable distance which is so often the feeling that I get in US and European Museums. The Museo del Ejercito contains a lot of replicas of historical buldings/statues, etc. but on the whole it have me a much better understanding of Peruvian history on the whole.

The center areas of the fortress have, among other things, old military vehicles. The helicopter is the first Peruvian model of helicopter, from France, called the Mosquito. The corolla wagon is not one of the vehicles on display, but is rather at a ‘Playa de Estecionamiento,’ literally ‘Parking Beach.’ I love that term.

On top of the fortress walls between the Queen’s Tower (in the picture) and the King’s Tower (behind me in the picture)

This is in the King’s Tower, where there was a prision. The only way out was to die, and the walls were solid stone, only narrow enough to walk through, no room to lay down, and completely dark. We got to walk into it, and it was really shocking. The picture below is from outside of the prision. The central window was where water and food were delivered to prisioners every two weeks, and the windows to either side were used to torture prisioners by making the cell either extremely hot or cold. The room also had partial holes in the walls that allowed the conversations of the prisioners to be observed.

Hallways in the King’s Tower.

There is a lookout point on the top of the King’s tower and I took the pictures below of Lima and the museum from it.

This is the lookout tower from the base. It’s fairly short but the staircase inside has narrow wooden stairs that are more like a glorified ladder. With my Machu Picchu knees and fear of heights I was moving slowly when a little boy whose parents were on our tour ran down behind me and started pushing on my back to speed me up. I’m pretty sure it was the first time I thought and exclaimed anything in Spanish without planning it but I turned around and said no me empujes! (don’t push me!) and the little brat backed off… a bit.