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Iquitos is the capital of the Loreto region and Maynas province in north-eastern Peru, known as the capital of the Peruvian Amazon. It stands on the Amazon plains where the Nanay and Itaya rivers meet the Amazon, and it is the largest city in the world that cannot be reached by road outside an island: everyone arrives by river or by air. The metropolitan area of four districts has about 470,000 people.
The Jesuits founded a mission here around 1757, San Pablo de Napeanos, for the Napeano and Iquito peoples. The town stayed tiny until the rubber boom of 1880 to 1914, when, with Manaus, it became one of the great rubber cities and the base of the Peruvian Amazon Company. Rubber barons built tiled mansions, an iron house and a luxury hotel, while forced labour in the forests caused terrible abuses.
Today visitors walk the rubber-era centre and the Malecón Tarapacá, take boats to the stilt houses of Belén, and head out to a butterfly farm, a monkey rescue island, white-sand forest reserves and the vast flooded forest of Pacaya-Samiria.
The oldest and most important public space in Iquitos has been the heart of the city since 1764 and fills a single block. Its Obelisk of the Heroes lists the men of Loreto who died in the War of the Pacific, and its round fountain sends coloured jets of water about ten metres into the air.
The neo-Gothic Cathedral of St John the Baptist was begun in 1911 on the site of an older church, opened in 1919 and finished with its 20-metre tower in 1924. A clock bought in Switzerland was fitted in 1925, and since 1996 it has been part of the cultural heritage of Peru.
This prefabricated house clad in iron plates was made by Les Forges d'Aiseau in Belgium, shown at the 1889 Paris Exposition and put up facing the main square in 1890. It is often credited to Gustave Eiffel, but there is no evidence for that, and today it holds shops and a restaurant.
Built from 1908 to 1912 for Otoniel Vela, this art nouveau building with tiles from Málaga and wrought-iron balconies was a luxury hotel for rubber traders, said to be the first in Peru. The army has had its offices here since 1961, and the building appears on a one-sol coin.
Built at the end of the 19th century during the rubber boom, this promenade runs along the Itaya river one block from the main square and is the city's favourite meeting place. It is named after Tarapacá, the province Peru lost in the War of the Pacific, and is lined with rubber-era houses.
Known as the Amazonian Venice, this riverside quarter is built of houses on stilts and homes on rafts floating on the Itaya, and its life changes with the rise and fall of the river. Upper Belén holds the market and viewpoints, while Lower Belén has the bandstand and the small river ports.
The main market of Iquitos begins at the end of 9 de Diciembre street under a large blue building and spreads through narrow lanes of stalls. Goods from across the region are traded here, from rolled jungle tobacco to palm hearts, and locals call it the pantry of the Amazon.
Built from 1910 to 1913 by the rubber baron Luis Felipe Morey, this two-storey mansion belonged to his brother Adolfo, who raised fourteen children here, several of them educated in Europe. Its tall windows behind fine wrought-iron grilles face the small Plaza Ramón Castilla.
Its name means house of butterflies in Quechua, and this butterfly farm and rescue centre at Padrecocha on the Nanay river is the only one in Peru. It keeps 42 Amazon species, including the blue morpho and the owl butterfly, shows their full life cycle and also cares for monkeys and a jaguar.
This island in the Amazon, once called Timicuro, lies 15 kilometres by river from Bellavista-Nanay and holds a 450-hectare rescue centre for primates seized from illegal traders. Titi monkeys, pygmy marmosets and spider monkeys are returned to the forest, while many stay on the island for life.
South of the city, this national tourist park covers 369 hectares of forest around Lake Quistococha, ringed by aguaje palms. It has an artificial white-sand beach called Tunchi Playa, a zoo of Amazon mammals, birds, reptiles and fish, a museum of preserved animals and a nursery for reforestation.
Set up in 2004 to protect rare forests growing on almost pure white sand, this reserve of 58,000 hectares lies 23 kilometres south-west of Iquitos on the Nanay river. Birders come for the Iquitos gnatcatcher and other rare species, and the forest also hides jaguars and woolly monkeys.
With 2,080,000 hectares, this is the largest national reserve in Peru and the most extensive protected area of seasonally flooded Amazon forest in South America, a Ramsar wetland since 1986. About 40,000 people, many of them Cocama-Cocamilla, live inside and depend on its rivers and forest.
This lively quarter and port in the north of the city, in the district of Punchana, sits on the Nanay close to the Amazon. Boats leave from here for Padrecocha and other riverside villages, and a small market by the Plaza Boulevard sells local dishes cooked over barbecue grills.
North of the city the Nanay river flows into the left bank of the Amazon through wetlands and many small islands. The meeting of the black waters of the Nanay with the muddy Amazon is known locally as the Serpentine Union of the Waters, and the main river ports of Iquitos lie along this stretch.
The Ucayali and the Marañón meet upstream of Iquitos to form what most countries call the main stem of the Amazon, the largest river in the world by the volume of water it carries. With no road to the city, the river is the route by which people and goods reach Iquitos.
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