Where to Stay in Petare, Miranda

What is Petare known for?

The largest informal settlement in Venezuela and in South America spreads across the Sucre Municipality, and its self-built housing has become one of the defining images of Greater Caracas. Underneath it lies something older. The Cathedral of the Sweet Name of Jesus stands in a colonial core founded three centuries before the metropolis reached it, and the Centro de Arte La Estancia keeps exhibitions running a short way off.

What are the main landmarks in Petare?

The Cathedral of the Sweet Name of Jesus gives the old centre its focus, and the Iglesia Parroquial San Antonio María Claret serves a parish grown far past what the colonial town needed. Mansión Borges is the other survivor. Two more draw crowds rather than worshippers: the Gimnasio José Joaquín Papá Carrillo for sport, and the Centro de Arte La Estancia for exhibitions that pull visitors from across the Metropolitan District of Caracas.

What is the history of Petare?

The town began in 1621 as San José de Guanarito, a separate settlement with its own parish and its own name, and only later did the fuller title Dulce Nombre de Jesús de Petare attach itself to the place. Caracas was a separate town then. For most of three centuries the two stayed apart, and the Cathedral of the Sweet Name of Jesus grew into the anchor of a colonial centre that had no reason to think of itself as a suburb.

Mansión Borges stands among the buildings the old centre kept. Expansion did the rest. As Caracas spread outward, Petare was drawn into the Greater Caracas area and reorganised as part of the Sucre Municipality inside Miranda, one of the five divisions the metropolis is split between.

Housing followed, most of it built by the people who needed it, until Petare had become the largest informal settlement in Venezuela and in South America. Civic building continued alongside it. The Iglesia Parroquial San Antonio María Claret, the Gimnasio José Joaquín Papá Carrillo, and the Centro de Arte La Estancia serve the wider district, while the colonial core sits intact underneath the modern one.

Where is Petare?

Petare occupies the Sucre Municipality, one of the five divisions of Caracas, and lies within Miranda, though the Metropolitan District of Caracas takes it in. Building runs edge to edge. Caracas grew outward until the gap between the two closed, so the boundary between Petare and the rest of the metropolitan area is administrative rather than anything a visitor would notice on the street.

What is the climate of Petare?

Rain and dry season, not summer and winter, mark the Petare year, and the tropical band the Metropolitan District of Caracas sits in keeps temperatures within a narrow range from month to month. Downpours arrive hard. Wet-season rain runs fast over paved and self-built ground alike, which matters more here than the thermometer ever does, and the drier months leave the streets of the Sucre Municipality dusty instead.

How do you get to Petare?

Arrival is by way of Caracas. Petare sits inside the Metropolitan District of Caracas, so the metropolitan transport network that serves the Sucre Municipality is what carries people in and out rather than any long-distance terminal of its own. Traffic between Petare and central Caracas is the constant of the journey, and the trip is measured in how the roads are running rather than in distance across Miranda.