Comayagua Cathedral (Immaculate Conception)
Colonial cathedral of 1711 whose tower holds a medieval clock brought from Moorish Spain.
Comayagua was the colonial capital of Honduras, and its cathedral was built over several decades in the seventeenth century and formally inaugurated in December 1711. The front combines Baroque and Plateresque carving in a screen of niches and paired columns; behind it the church is roofed by a sequence of domes, and the main retable is faced in gilded wood. Several side altars, a choir with an early pipe organ and a reconstructed cloister courtyard survive from the colonial period.
The single tower contains eight bells and the clock known as the Reloj de Comayagua. Its iron gear train was made in Al-Andalus, is traditionally dated to about 1100 and is said to have worked in the Alhambra at Granada before Philip III sent it to the province of Honduras. It was installed in the church of La Merced, then the cathedral, in 1636 and moved to the new cathedral in 1711. It still strikes the hours and quarters on two of the tower bells, and is often described as the oldest working clock in the Americas.
Highlights
- Baroque and Plateresque west front, inaugurated in December 1711
- Reloj de Comayagua, a gear clock from Moorish Spain, still striking
- Gilded main retable and colonial side altars
- Reconstructed cloister courtyard beside the nave
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