The Viceroyalty of Peru (Spanish: Virreinato del Perú) was a Spanish imperial provincial administrative district, created in 1542, that originally contained modern-day Peru and most of the Spanish Empire in South America, governed from the capital of Lima. The Viceroyalty of Peru was officially called the Kingdom of Peru. Peru was one of the two Spanish Viceroyalties in the Americas from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.