Travel to La Paz

Long before the Spanish captain Alonso de Mendoza founded Nuestra Señora de La Paz on October 20, 1548, this dramatic Andean valley lay within reach of one of the most sophisticated civilizations of the ancient Americas. Just 72 kilometers away stand the ruins of Tiwanaku, the spiritual and political center of a pre-Columbian culture that flourished between 500 and 900 CE, reaching its zenith as one of the largest cities of its time, with population estimates ranging from around 10,000 to as many as 70,000. This civilization mastered high-altitude agriculture, raised megalithic architecture that still puzzles engineers today, and tracked the movements of the heavens with remarkable precision.

The Aymara people, descendants of the Tiwanaku world, called this valley Chuquiago Marka, meaning gold farm, for the precious metal found in its rivers. When Mendoza established the Spanish settlement to mark the end of Peru’s civil wars, he chose the site for its strategic position between the silver mines of Potosí and the Pacific coast. Originally founded at nearby Laja, the settlement was quickly moved into the more sheltered canyon of the Choqueyapu River, where it grew into the extraordinary vertical metropolis seen today, bridging ancient indigenous tradition with colonial grandeur and modern innovation.

At 3,631 meters above sea level, La Paz holds the Guinness World Record as the highest administrative capital city on Earth, an environment where newcomers find themselves catching their breath on the gentlest slope. The city sprawls across elevations from 3,250 to 4,100 meters, cascading down the canyon walls of the Choqueyapu River like a vast amphitheater carved into the Andes. The topography creates distinct microclimates and social zones, with wealthier districts traditionally in the lower, warmer south and the largely indigenous majority living in the heights, where neighboring El Alto, at about 4,150 meters, ranks among the world’s highest major cities.

The thin air holds only about 68 percent of the oxygen found at sea level, a fact that has shaped everything from local physiology to architecture. Aymara people have adapted over countless generations with greater lung capacity and higher red blood cell counts, while colonial buildings rely on thick walls and small windows to hold their heat. The snow-capped peak of Illimani, at 6,438 meters Bolivia’s second-highest mountain after Sajama, towers over the city like a guardian, a constant reminder that this is one of the most extreme urban environments on Earth, where a great metropolis thrives in air that would leave most lowland visitors gasping.

In 2014, La Paz achieved what no other city had attempted: building a network of aerial cable cars as the backbone of an entire urban transit system. Mi Teleférico, meaning my cable car, transformed life in the world’s highest metropolitan area by linking La Paz with El Alto along color-coded lines that now run for around 33 kilometers. The system carries hundreds of thousands of passengers a day, turning commutes that once meant an hour in traffic into a quiet ten-minute glide above the rooftops.

The network is far more than transit infrastructure. It became a symbol of indigenous mobility and of a city that leapfrogged conventional solutions for something genuinely new. Built by the Austrian firm Doppelmayr at a cost of more than 700 million dollars, it runs roughly 1,500 gondolas that leave the stations every twelve seconds, each with wifi and sweeping views over the Altiplano. The cars have become the everyday link between El Alto, largely indigenous and working class, and central La Paz, while giving visitors an unmatched aerial view of the vertical city. Every station carries both a Spanish and an Aymara name, a nod to the heritage of the majority population woven into a thoroughly modern system.