Bourbon manoeuvres in the plaza: Shifting urban models in late colonial Lima

Most colonial Hispanic American cities were originally planned around a main plaza, which was a multifunctional square crucial for urban life. This spatial model for the whole city based on a main square is termed the Plaza Mayor model. Bourbon reforms of the second half of the eighteenth century aimed at transforming this model according to a Plaza de Armas organization. Here, these two models (Plaza Mayor and Plaza de Armas) are characterized, and their contradictions in terms of political projects and quotidian city life are analysed. For late colonial Lima, Bourbon efforts to introduce the Plaza de Armas are shown to have affected both the main function of the central square and the entire urban system.