In this elegantly written account of the creation of the ‘City of Kings’, Alejandra Osorio challenges many historical preconceptions that have long been used to understand the capital of present-day Peru. In contrast to most commentators, Osorio posits that Lima was not a colonial city built with its back to the Andes, but was instead a very modern Baroque city, a cosmopolitan and important player in the composite monarchy from which it stemmed. It was not only a hybrid city that reflected the diversity of the empire to which it belonged, but a modern city with an important role in controlling what the author describes as its own ‘peripheries’. In this book the relationship between Lima and the Iberian peninsula is presented as one of interdependence, as Osorio considers that the City of Kings was modern and imperial before it became ‘colonial’.

The book begins by setting Lima into context as the ‘head’ of the nascent ‘imaginary political body called the imperio peruano’ (p. 1). Osorio describes not only the way in which the city was built with mud, bricks and mortar, but also how it was narrated and envisioned as it grew in importance during the seventeenth century. She explores the importance of the idea of the city in the late Renaissance and Baroque periods, as a utopian space for civilisation. She then argues that Lima configured itself as a Catholic bastion, a theatre of power and a centre for commerce, and that it was in the combination of these factors that greatness was achieved, and narrated.

The first chapter explores the creation of Lima as a new city in opposition to the ancient city of Cusco. Osorio analyses the rivalry between these two urban centres and how they both tried to claim primacy based on different arguments. Cusco clung to the old medieval and Roman idea of ‘head cities’ that were built upon the ruins of conquered cities. Lima, in contrast, worked hard to establish its credentials as a new and successful city. It was afforded an ideal opportunity during the civil wars that divided the conquistadors; Lima proved its loyalty while Cusco faltered. From then on Lima used the more modern arguments put forward in the Renaissance that linked a city's greatness with its position of prominence. This was a struggle that Lima ultimately won by becoming the seat of power with a viceroy and a royal court, and therefore the cabeza (head). This was achieved by investing heavily so as to be able to show that the city was indeed great.

After studying the process by which Lima was anointed the centre of power in the continent, Osorio examines the way in which the citizens of Lima devoted themselves to showing this power through political ritual and ceremonial. The body of the book is encumbered with the practice of symbolic power, with two chapters dedicated to earthly and kingly power while the other two are concerned with the heavenly power of the Church and the risks of non-compliance. The second chapter describes the many ceremonies linked to the local viceregal court, particularly the entrance of the viceroy and his consort. The third chapter is concerned with the celebrations of the monarchical calendar and the way in which the King's simulacra were used to strengthen his ties with the people in a way not too dissimilar to how the Church used images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the martyrs and saints. It is here that Osorio leaves us slightly curious, as she asserts that ‘the centrality of the King's simulacrum in Lima's ceremonies seems to have been unmatched by any other American city’ (p. 84). Does it seem that way because we know so little about the other cities? This raises the broader question of how different or similar Lima was to other colonial urban centres, an issue which is not really tackled in the book.

The fourth and fifth chapters are devoted to issues of religiosity and compliance with the Church's ideology. This is clearly the case in Osorio's analysis of the auto de fe and the immense importance it had in the Baroque machinery of social control. As with the ceremonies of royal power, this public embodiment of repentance achieved symbolic results not only through the performance of processions but also through the narrative produced to commemorate them. The final chapter examines sorcery and sainthood in a novel way which highlights the closeness between them and how they were to a certain degree two sides of the same coin, for there was a fine line between ‘the deeds promoted and accepted by the Catholic Church as evidence of saintly “miracles” and the idolatrous practices of healing and sorcery it sought to extirpate’ (p. 134). Osorio shows how important it was for Lima to present itself as a civilised, Catholic, pious city, and how by having local saints this identity was strengthened and promoted around the world.

The book establishes the centrality of ritual and its narration, calling into question the idea of the separation between the ‘lettered city’ and the ‘physical city’ proposed by a critic, Angel Rama. Osorio believes that this separation is arbitrary and argues that the city was a space for performance to be understood as ‘the real embodiment of political theater’ (p. 150). The book is therefore a great contribution to the discussion of political ritual and the centrality of this performance of power, which is useful to understanding the way in which political legitimacy was and is built in the seventeenth century and beyond. A second important contribution is to the understanding of Lima as the multi-ethnic hybrid city it has always been, successfully dismissing the idea that it was an elite city with its back to the rest of the country. And finally this book is an invitation to reconsider the very conception of metropoles and colonies in the context of the composite Hispanic monarchy.