Arequipa Flag

The flag of Arequipa is the arms of the city on a crimson field. The arms show a griffin holding a banner inscribed for Charles V, granted to the city by royal cédula on 25 September 1541.

Behind the plain description sits an argument. The colour of the Arequipa standard was disputed among historians through the 1940s, and it took the work of Francisco Mostajo and Víctor M. Barriga to settle it as crimson.

The griffin is the city itself, and the banner it holds names the king who chartered it. Arequipa was founded on 15 August 1540 as Villa Hermosa de Nuestra Señora de la Asunta de Arequipa, and raised to the rank of city just over a year later, on 25 September 1541, by the same cédula that gave it these arms.

The crimson field is not decorative. It descends from the colonial standard of the city, which is why the twentieth century argument about its exact shade mattered enough for historians to publish on it.

The arms are older than the flag by four centuries. Charles V granted them in 1541, and the Peruvian writer Ricardo Palma later recorded an account of how the elements were arranged, drawing on a chronicler who knew the original grant.

The standard itself has a murkier record. By the 1940s there was no agreement on its colour, and rival versions circulated in print. Mostajo and Barriga worked from colonial documents to confirm the crimson, against the alternative shade then in circulation, and that is the version the city uses today.

No proportions have been fixed for the flag, which is common for Peruvian municipal banners, where the arms are regulated and the cloth is left to custom.