Peru 🇵🇪

Peru is an independent state in South America, and a member of the United Nations. Treaties and official documents call it Republic of Peru. Its seat of government is Lima.

The population is about 34.2 million, placing it 48th of 249 by population — between Ghana above it and Madagascar below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 3rd of 13 in size and 4th in population.

The land area is 1,285,216 km², which ranks it 21st of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Mongolia and just ahead of Chad. That makes it almost exactly the same size as Chad.

The coordinates the dataset gives are 10.0° S, 76.0° W, which puts it in the southern hemisphere, roughly 1,113 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

The Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste and Christmas Island sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

4 countries share a land border with it: Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Colombia. The largest of them by area is Brazil, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 297.1 million people.

With both a coast and land borders, it has the trade options a landlocked country does not.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 27 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

3 languages carry official status: Aymara, Quechua and Spanish. Aymara, the first listed, is shared with 1 other entry worldwide.

Someone from Peru is a Peruvian.

Against the Americas as a whole it is the 7th most populous of 55 entries, and it accounts for 8.2% of everyone living in South America.

Zoom in from the world to South America and Peru sits 4th of 13 by population and 3rd by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Argentina just above and Venezuela just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Brazil is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in South America has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇦🇷 Argentina
• 🇻🇪 Venezuela
• 🇧🇷 Brazil

The Peruvian sol (PEN) is used only in Peru among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. Spanish is listed for 23 entries here, Peru among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Peru ranks 21st of 249 by area and 48th by population. That works out at 0.86% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.42% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Peru in the size ordering are Mongolia at 1,564,110 km² and Chad at 1,284,000 km², against Peru's 1,285,216 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Peru averages 27 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it thinly settled by global standards — 195th of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Money there is the Peruvian sol (S/., PEN). That currency appears nowhere else on this list.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Peru, the answer is Lima.

Websites there use the .pe domain. Calls from overseas start with +51. Standard country codes: pe and PER.

Peru is one of the 192 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.