Huaca Casa Rosada

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Huaca Casa Rosada is an archaeological site in the San Miguel District of Lima, Peru. It covers about 5,300 square meters in the city and shows human occupation from the end of the Intermediate period to the Inca period, as well as remains from the Spanish colonial and Republican eras. The site lies between Prolongación Cusco, Pasaje Rosario Araoz, and Prolongación Ayacucho.

The main feature is a square platform roughly 36 meters on each side and 3 to 4 meters high, built with rammed earth and adobe. Occupation ranges from the late Intermediate period to the Late period, linked to the Maranga complex under the Ichma lordship; the exact use of the platform in that period is unknown.

Until the mid-1970s, the huaca sat in a large crop field, with irrigation ditches to its north and west that damaged its lower parts. The site includes large adobes filled with earth and wall fragments forming the base of a Republican-period house called "Casa Rosada." This house used quincha and wood walls, had a square floor plan, and posts made of white oak and mulatto oak (likely from Guayaquil, Ecuador), with some huarango wood. The exterior was finished with a mud-based coat and pink paint.

Urban development known as Urbanization Pando, second stage, led to subdividing the surrounding land and, for new houses, the beams and columns of Casa Rosada were reused, destroying much of the republican vestiges.

On December 4, 2003, the National Institute of Culture declared Huaca Casa Rosada a Cultural Patrimony of the Nation. In 2004, under Mayor Salvador Heresi, the site was fenced, cleaned, and the walls consolidated. The site endured neglect until July 2024, when local residents and Mayor Eduardo Bless revived it with cleaning, lighting, and activities to serve as a cultural venue.

Excavations in 1973–1974 by the Seminar of Archaeology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru found fragments of 16th–18th-century pottery and imported ceramics, including blue-painted French glaze ware, as well as abundant green and brown glass and green wine bottles. Some ceramics showed green and blue motifs similar to those at Huaca Palomino. In the early 2000s, excavations found rammed-earth compartments at the top of the building and a colonial-republican stairway from ground level to the top.