Francisco Pizarro González, 1st Marqués de los Atabillos (c. 1471 or 1476 – 26 June 1541) was a Spanish conquistador, conqueror of the Incan Empire and founder of Lima, the modern-day capital of Peru. Pizarro was born in Trujillo, Extremadura, Spain. Sources differ in the birth year they assign to him: 1471, 1475–1478, or unknown. He was an illegitimate son of Gonzalo Pizarro Rodríguez de Aguilar (senior) (1446-1522) who as colonel of infantry served in the Italian campaigns under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, and in Navarre, with some distinction. His mother was Francisca González Mateos, a woman of slender means from Trujillo, daughter of Juan Mateos, of the family called Los Roperos, and wife María Alonso, labradores pecheros from Trujillo. His mother married late in life and had a son Francisco Martín de Alcántara, married to Inés Muñoz, who from the beginning was at the Conquest of Perú, where he then lived, always at his brother's side, who held him always as one of his most trustful men. Through his father, Francisco was second cousin to Hernán Cortés, the famed conquistador of Mexico.

On 13 February 1502, he sailed from Spain with the new appointed Governor of Hispaniola Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres on a fleet of thirty ships. It was the largest fleet that had ever sailed to the New World. The thirty ships carried 2,500 colonists.

In 1513, he accompanied Vasco Núñez de Balboa in his crossing of the Isthmus of Panama and became the first Europeans to view the Pacific coast of the New World. The following year, in 1514, Pedro Arias de Avila (Pedrarias) became the newly appointed governor of Castilla de Oro and succeeded Balboa. The next five years Pizarro became a close associate of Pedrarias Dávila and the governor assigned him a repartimiento of natives and cattle. When Pedrarias Dávila decided to get rid of Balboa out of distrust, he instructed Pizarro to personally arrest him and bring him to stand trial. Balboa was duly convicted and beheaded in January of 1519. For his loyalty to Pedrarias Dávila, Pizarro was bestowed the important political position of mayor (Alcalde) and magistrate of the then recently founded Panama City from 1519 to 1523.