Lima's buried treasure.

• Author: Holston, Mark
• Position: Presbitero Matias Maestro Cemetery

ALTHOUGH BUENOS Aires's famed Recoleta Cemetery, resting place of Eva Peron, may be better known, Lima's Presbitero Matias Maestro Cemetery is an equally distinguished resting place of many of Peru's most notable citizens of the past two centuries. A sprawling expanse of elaborate mausoleums and marble statuary reached in just a few minutes by taxi from downtown Lima, the cemetery was established by Viceroy Fernando de Abascal in 1805, the first municipal cemetery in Latin America. The cemetery takes its name from the architect, sculptor, and painter who was commissioned to oversee its design and construction, Presbitero Matias. The formality of its neoclassical design is a stunning setting for one of the largest collections of fine nineteenth-century European marble sculpture in the Americas.

Among those interred here are War of the Pacific heroes Manuel Grau and Alfonso Ugarte, political theorist and journalist Jose Carlos Mariategui, and many heads-of-state, including Gulllermo Billhghurst (1912-13), Mariscal Ramon Castilla (president on four different occasions in the 1800s), and General Oscar Benavides (president twice in the early twentieth century).

Named a national monument in 1972, today the cemetery faces mounting environmental and financial problems. Airborne pollution from nearby factories assaults the venerable marble statuary and mausolea. Other difficulties include a lack of sufficient funds for maintenance and vandalism: Hands...