Some cities can be explained with a map, others can only be understood with your lungs. La Paz belongs to the second group. Here the air feels different, the streets climb and drop as if the city itself were breathing, and from almost any corner a snow-capped peak seems to watch over everything happening below. This isn’t a city you visit: it’s a city you climb, one you cover uphill, and you only truly understand it once you’re standing breathless on a corner, looking up toward El Alto, wondering how there can be so much city at such an altitude.
Before arriving, almost every traveler carries the same question: is La Paz actually the capital of Bolivia or not? The answer has its own history, and it’s worth knowing before you walk its streets, because it completely changes the way you look at them.
History and Culture of La Paz: a City Born From a Revolution
La Paz was founded in 1548 by the Spanish, in a hollow chosen precisely because it offered shelter from the wind and cold of the Altiplano. Over the centuries it became the political and commercial center of the southern Andes, and today its historic center still holds several traces of that colonial past that you can explore on foot.
Plaza San Francisco, with its mestizo baroque church facade, remains the symbolic heart of the city. A few blocks away is Plaza Murillo, home to both the cathedral and the presidential palace, and where much of the country’s institutional life beats. Nearby, the Alberto Saavedra Pérez Municipal Theatre is a reminder that La Paz was, and still is, a city of theatre and intense cultural life.
But if there’s one street that sums up La Paz’s historical memory, it’s Calle Jaén. Cobbled, narrow, and colonial, it brings together five museums and, above all, the Casa de Murillo, the former residence of Pedro Domingo Murillo. He led the La Paz Revolution of July 16, 1809, an uprising that came years before Bolivia’s definitive independence and turned La Paz into an early symbol of the region’s fight for emancipation. Walking down Jaén means literally walking over that date.
This whole historical route can be covered in a single guided tour: the La Paz in a Day excursion links Plaza San Francisco, Plaza Murillo, the Municipal Theatre, and Calle Jaén with the rest of the city, including the cable car and the view over southern La Paz.
La Paz, a City at 3,600-4,100 Meters: the Altitude Explained
Here’s the first surprise for anyone arriving for the first time: in La Paz, altitude isn’t a fixed number, it’s a range. The city center sits at around 3,600 meters, but the city stretches upward, climbing the slopes of the canyon that contains it, reaching 4,100 meters in its highest neighborhoods. And even higher, on the plateau that crowns the hollow, sits El Alto, which already brushes against and constantly exceeds 4,100 meters.
This uneven geography is the reason La Paz is often described as the world’s highest seat of government. There’s no other city of this size, with this density of institutional and everyday life, functioning at such an altitude.
For travelers, this has a practical consequence: soroche, or altitude sickness, can already appear from 2,500-3,000 meters, so arriving in La Paz without having spent time at a lower altitude beforehand calls for simple but important precautions. Drinking plenty of water, avoiding alcohol and intense physical effort on the first day, and eating light all help a lot. Locally, coca leaf, taken as an infusion or chewed as acullico, is the most widespread traditional remedy for mild symptoms.
The good news is that not every plan in La Paz requires prior acclimatization. The La Paz Cable Car tour is designed for exactly that: your very first day. It’s the only tour in the catalog that can be done without a single day of adjustment, which makes it the perfect introduction to the city while your body is still getting used to the altitude.
Why Does Bolivia Have Two Capitals? Sucre vs. La Paz
This is probably the most repeated question among first-time visitors to Bolivia, and it has a fairly concrete historical answer.
When Bolivia gained independence, in the mid-1820s, Sucre was designated the capital of the new republic. Over time it became the seat of the Supreme Court of Justice, in other words the heart of the country’s judicial power, a role it still holds today. That’s why Sucre remains, formally, Bolivia’s constitutional capital.
However, in 1899 the Federal War broke out, an internal conflict between different regions of the country over control of political power. The outcome of that war effectively moved the seat of government to La Paz, which has concentrated the executive and legislative powers ever since: the Presidency, the ministries, and the Legislative Assembly operate there, not in Sucre.
That’s how the arrangement still standing today came to be: Sucre keeps the symbolic title and the judicial power, while La Paz is, in practice, the city where the country is governed day to day. Two capitals, two roles, one Bolivia.
Sucre deserves a mention with the respect it’s due: it’s known as the White City, recognized by UNESCO for its whitewashed colonial facades, and it’s usually about 10-12 hours by bus from La Paz, or a short flight away. It isn’t part of our tour catalog for now, so if you’re interested in visiting it, we’ll tell you honestly: it’s a beautiful destination, but we don’t operate it ourselves yet.
What to See in and Around La Paz: Moon Valley and Ánimas Valley
Ten kilometers from the center of La Paz, the landscape changes abruptly. Right where the city ends, centuries of wind and water erosion on clay and sandstone have sculpted two settings that look like they belong to another planet.
Ánimas Valley is made up of rocky spires that rise toward the sky like natural cathedrals. It’s a protected area of 2,538 hectares, declared a departmental natural monument, and it’s covered on a guided walk of roughly an hour and a quarter. On clear days, the backdrop is Illimani, at 6,438 meters the highest peak in the Cordillera Real of the Andes, a presence you can feel almost constantly from La Paz but that stands out here with a different kind of clarity.
Very close by, Moon Valley offers a different kind of wonder: a labyrinth of clay and sandstone whose colors range from an almost-white beige to tones bordering on red, depending on which minerals the erosion has exposed. The roughly 45 minute route ends at the Killi Killi viewpoint, named after the Andean kestrel that circles the area. From there the view over the La Paz hollow is complete, and the spot also carries enormous historical weight: it was from that very same rise that Túpac Katari led the indigenous siege of the city in 1781. It isn’t just any viewpoint: it’s a witness carved in stone.
This whole route is included in the Moon Valley and Ánimas Valley excursion, which does require at least 24 hours of prior acclimatization in La Paz before setting out.
The World’s Highest Cable Car and El Alto
If there’s one contemporary symbol of La Paz, it’s Mi Teleférico. Opened in May 2014 with its first line, it quickly became the most extensive urban cable car network in the world: ten lines and about 32 kilometers of cables connecting entire neighborhoods through the air. And here’s the most important thing to understand: it isn’t a tourist attraction set up for visitors, it’s real public transport, used daily by close to 300,000 people to get to work, school, or the market.
Riding the Orange Line up to the old Central Station, a 1930 building that once connected La Paz with the port of Arica on the Pacific, and then taking the Red Line toward El Alto, lets you experience that city from above in a matter of minutes: the elevation gain along the way is about 500 meters.
El Alto is Bolivia’s second most populous city, predominantly Aymara, and it grew mainly through migration from the provinces and the relocation of miners left jobless by the sector’s crisis in the 1980s. It’s a young, constantly expanding city that looks down on La Paz from the plateau that crowns it.
On the way back, the route passes through the open-air markets of Buenos Aires and Tumusla avenues, and through the Witches’ Market, where stalls selling herbs and amulets sit alongside the famous mesas: ritual offerings prepared by yatiris, the Aymara ritual specialists. One thing worth clarifying, since it often raises questions among visitors: the so-called sullus seen at some stalls come from natural miscarriages, not from any kind of animal sacrifice.
All of this can be experienced on the La Paz Cable Car excursion, about four hours long and ideal for your very first day, or in the fuller day version, La Paz in a Day, which adds the historic center, the Witches’ Market, and a descent toward the south of the city with views of Ánimas Valley.
Tiwanaku and Chacaltaya: Excursions Near La Paz
Less than two hours from the city, there are two getaways that show completely different faces of the region.
Tiwanaku is one of the most important pre-Incan archaeological sites in South America, and its most striking piece is in the Lithic Museum: the Bennett Monolith, 7.30 meters tall and 1.20 meters wide, extracted from the Semi-Subterranean Temple. It was moved to La Paz in 1933 and displayed for almost 70 years in a city square, until it was finally returned to Tiwanaku, its place of origin, in 2002. Visiting the full site, at 3,850 meters, is a way to grasp just how far back Andean history goes before the Incas ever arrived.
Chacaltaya, on the other hand, is pure contrast in altitude: at 5,421 meters, it was for decades one of the highest ski resorts in the world, built on a glacier that no longer exists, having vanished due to global warming. What remains is an extreme, silent landscape, with an open panorama over the entire Cordillera Real that takes your breath away, both for the view and for the altitude itself.
Both excursions depart from La Paz: Tiwanaku and Chacaltaya.
Lake Titicaca: the Gem We Don’t Yet Include in Our Catalog
No account of this region would be complete without mentioning Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world, shared between Bolivia and Peru at around 3,812 meters of altitude. On the Bolivian side, Copacabana is the usual gateway, and from there boats sail out to Isla del Sol, considered in Inca mythology to be the birthplace of the sun and of the first Incas.
We’ll tell you this with the same honesty as always: we don’t currently operate an organized tour to Titicaca, Copacabana, or Isla del Sol. We’d rather tell you clearly what we do know and operate than improvise something we can’t guarantee. If your itinerary includes the lake, it’s a destination that deserves time of its own, and we’re happy to advise you over WhatsApp on how to combine it with your time in La Paz.
A Fun Fact: La Paz and High-Altitude Football
Here’s a fact that almost always gets a smile: the Bolivian national football team plays its home matches at the Hernando Siles stadium, right in the center of La Paz, at around 3,637 meters. For any team not used to the altitude, playing there feels like another planet, literally, because of the lack of oxygen.
The so-called “altitude effect” was talked about so much that in 2007 FIFA went as far as banning international matches above 2,500 meters, following complaints from several national teams, Brazil among them. The rule was later relaxed. But the example every Bolivian remembers with pride dates back to 2009, in the World Cup qualifiers: Bolivia beat Argentina 6-1, right there at the Hernando Siles, a result that’s stayed etched in the continent’s football memory, and one that many still credit, in part, to those nearly 3,700 meters of altitude.
The Cholitas Wrestlers: Another Chapter of La Paz
No account of the living culture of La Paz and El Alto can leave out the cholitas wrestlers: Aymara women who step into the ring in pollera skirts and braids, bringing a stage presence that blends wrestling, identity, and popular spectacle. It’s a phenomenon born in El Alto that today draws both locals and travelers from all over the world.
We’ve dedicated a full piece to the historical and cultural detail in The Cholitas Wrestlers of La Paz: History, and if you want to see the show live, the Cholitas Wrestling in La Paz excursion takes you straight to the ring.
Experience La Paz With Terra Alta
La Paz can’t be fully explained in an article; it’s explained by climbing its streets, breathing its thin air, and looking toward El Alto from a cable car that thousands of people use every morning just to get to work. Between its colonial history, the 1809 revolution, the tangle of its two capitals, and landscapes like Moon Valley or Chacaltaya, there’s more than a week’s worth of discoveries here.
If you want to put together your own route, you can start with La Paz Cable Car on the very day you arrive, follow up with La Paz in a Day or Moon Valley and Ánimas Valley, and add Tiwanaku or Chacaltaya depending on how many days you have.
To book or build a custom itinerary, message us on WhatsApp at +591 75397336. And if you’re planning your full trip through Bolivia, don’t miss our complete 2026 Bolivia guide, where we connect La Paz with the rest of southern Bolivia.