Which is the oldest bar in Lima?

Every Peruvian house on this site is in Lima, so the city question and the country question are the same one. The Antigua Taberna Queirolo gives the earliest year, 1880, for the grocery it began as; the Bar Cordano gives 13 January 1905 for a bazaar. Neither year has a document behind it.

A general store with drink on the shelves, selling to farms and households rather than to sit-down customers. The Queirolo describes itself as the typical pulpería of its period, serving the estates of Magdalena Vieja, with customers arriving by cart until the tram along Avenida Brasil brought a wider crowd in.

Why is the Antigua Taberna Queirolo out of the ranking?

Because the house is honest about what happened and nobody dated it. Its history says the corner became only the taberna over the years after 1880, which describes a change without fixing it in time. A ranking of drinking houses needs the year drink-led trade began, so the row keeps its page and its pin instead.

What does Patrimonio Cultural de la Nación mean here?

That Peru declared the Cordano's premises part of the nation's cultural heritage in 1989. It is protection for a room — the adobe walls, the worn granite floor, the three halls opposite the old railway station — and not a finding about when the bar opened. No Peruvian designation on this page dates a trade.

How old is Piano Bar Múnich?

Nobody publishes a founding year, and this page does not invent one. What places it is a dish: Spanish Wikipedia's account of the salchipapa, following El Comercio, has it sold here in the 1950s by a couple called Hans and Helga, which puts a working bar in the room by that decade and no earlier with any certainty.

3 pubs checked · updated 18 September 2026

The oldest pub in Peru

The short answer

Oldest claim

Antigua Taberna Queirolo

Says 1880. No document from that date has been found.

Grade C · Tradition

By claim the earliest Peruvian date on this list is 1880, at the Antigua Taberna Queirolo in Pueblo Libre — but the year dates a pulpería, and the house's own history says the corner came to be only the taberna over the years that followed, without naming one. By record there is nothing: no Peruvian house here has a document, the Bar Cordano's 1905 dates a bazaar rather than a bar, and Piano Bar Múnich has no founding year at all, only a room that was serving drink by the 1950s.

Peru's three houses are all in Lima, all founded by immigrants, and all of them began as something other than a bar — which is the single most useful thing to know before weighing any date on this page. Two were opened by Genoese families. Santiago Queirolo Raggio reached Lima from Genoa about 1877 and opened a pulpería, a grocery selling wine, preserves and provisions to the estates around Magdalena Vieja, on a corner where the family also kept a wine and pisco cellar a few doors along; Vigilio Botano and the brothers Luis and Antonio Cordano opened a bazaar by the old Desamparados station on 13 January 1905, which became a salón-restaurante later. The third was a counter kept by a Swiss-German couple where sausage and chips were sold as the Piqueo Múnich, and Peru traces the salchipapa to it. In each case the founding year records a shop, and nobody publishes the year the shop became a bar. Nor is there a register to ask. Peru declares cultural heritage — the Cordano's premises were designated in 1989 — but the designation protects rooms rather than dating trade, so every year here arrives through a house's own history, the Spanish encyclopaedia or the Lima press, and every grade is C.

A corner in Pueblo Libre, a bar by the station and a room on Quilca

Antigua Taberna Queirolo stands on the corner of Avenida San Martín and General Vivanco, in a house put up in the European manner in the middle of the 1870s and still standing. Wine and pisco are poured at the counter with chicharrón and escabeche beside them, and the room keeps one of Peru’s first telephones, a phonograph and an old till. The family’s vineyards moved south to Cañete in 1963. Bar Cordano is the one in the old centre, on Jirón Áncash opposite the former Desamparados railway station: adobe walls, worn granite underfoot, three rooms, and a business owned by the people who work in it since 1978. Piano Bar Múnich is on Jirón Quilca and is the least documented and the most affectionately written about — a bar with a piano played live in it, which El Comercio reported in September 2020 was refusing to close during the pandemic and sending its food out instead.

Three houses, no paperwork

This site grades on what can be read, and in Peru almost nothing can. The Queirolo’s account of itself is detailed and internally consistent, which is worth something and is not a document; Spanish Wikipedia’s article on the district repeats the same year and the same pulpería. The Cordano has an encyclopaedia entry, a heritage designation of 1989 and a founding date of 13 January 1905 that the sources themselves attach to a bazaar. The Múnich has no year at all, and is placed in the 1950s only because a famous dish is traced to its counter. The correct response to that is not to guess: two of the three carry the open question on their own pages, and the grades stay at C. How a claim is weighed against a record here is set out in the methodology, and why a shop that later poured is treated differently from a house built to pour in inn, tavern or alehouse.

What the press has to do instead of a register

Peru keeps no searchable licensing record this research can reach, so the question of whether a bar is still open has to be answered by reporting. Infobae’s survey of the historic bars of central Lima, published on 16 January 2025 under the heading of the classics still alive, is the most recent thing anybody has written about two of these three houses, and it is where their status comes from. Twenty months is a long time in the life of a bar, and both rows say plainly that the trade is believed rather than confirmed. That is a weaker position than a British pub with a food-hygiene inspection date on it, and pretending otherwise would be the easy thing to do.

Where Peru sits in the wider list

Three houses, one city, and none of them older than the 1880s — this is a first pass at a country with four centuries of colonial drinking behind it. Arequipa, Cusco, Trujillo and the picanterías of the south are entirely unworked here, and so is every Lima house that has closed. For the nearest comparison, another Pacific country whose old bars grew out of groceries and confectioners’ shops, see the oldest pubs in Chile; for the city that protects its old rooms by law, Argentina. The full international ranking is at the top 100 oldest pubs.

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The contenders, oldest claim first

ClaimProof

Antigua Taberna Queirolo
Grade C
Lima (Pueblo Libre), Peru
The house tells its own story plainly: the Queirolos reached Lima from Genoa about 1877, and in 1880 Santiago Queirolo Raggio opened what it calls the typical pulpería of the period on this corner of Magdalena Vieja, selling groceries, wine and preserves to the estates round about. The corner came in time to be only the taberna, with the family's wine and pisco cellar a few doors along the Jirón San Martín; the
Claims 1880; no early record found.
Bar Cordano
Grade C
Lima, Peru
The 1905 is the Lima press's: Infobae's survey of the city's historic bars dates the Cordano from 1905, and Spanish Wikipedia has the house founded on 13 January 1905 by the Genoese Vigilio Botano with the brothers Luis and Antonio Cordano, first as a bazaar and only later as a salón-restaurante. The 1905 record is therefore a shop, and none of the sources consulted dates the change to a bar. The staff have owned
Dated 1905 in the press; no early record found.
Piano Bar Múnich
Grade C
Lima, Peru
No founding year has been traced for this bar, and it does not appear to publish one. What places it is the salchipapa: Spanish Wikipedia's account of the dish, drawing on El Comercio and a Lima food blog, has it sold in the 1950s at a place called the Piano Bar Múnich, under the name Piqueo Múnich, kept by a Swiss-German couple called Hans and Helga, before it reached the streets and became one of Peru's emblematic
Locally dated 1950; no early record found.

The photographs above are other people's work, used under open licences. Every photographer, licence and source page is named in the image credits. A pub with no licensed photograph shows an illustrated façade instead.

Common questions

Which is the oldest bar in Lima?: Every Peruvian house on this site is in Lima, so the city question and the country question are the same one. The Antigua Taberna Queirolo gives the earliest year, 1880, for the grocery it began as; the Bar Cordano gives 13 January 1905 for a bazaar. Neither year has a document behind it.
What is a pulpería?: A general store with drink on the shelves, selling to farms and households rather than to sit-down customers. The Queirolo describes itself as the typical pulpería of its period, serving the estates of Magdalena Vieja, with customers arriving by cart until the tram along Avenida Brasil brought a wider crowd in.
Why is the Antigua Taberna Queirolo out of the ranking?: Because the house is honest about what happened and nobody dated it. Its history says the corner became only the taberna over the years after 1880, which describes a change without fixing it in time. A ranking of drinking houses needs the year drink-led trade began, so the row keeps its page and its pin instead.
What does Patrimonio Cultural de la Nación mean here?: That Peru declared the Cordano's premises part of the nation's cultural heritage in 1989. It is protection for a room — the adobe walls, the worn granite floor, the three halls opposite the old railway station — and not a finding about when the bar opened. No Peruvian designation on this page dates a trade.
How old is Piano Bar Múnich?: Nobody publishes a founding year, and this page does not invent one. What places it is a dish: Spanish Wikipedia's account of the salchipapa, following El Comercio, has it sold here in the 1950s by a couple called Hans and Helga, which puts a working bar in the room by that decade and no earlier with any certainty.