San Francisco Convent Museum
Nicaragua's oldest convent, now a museum holding the basalt statues carved on Zapatera island.
The Franciscan convent beside the church of San Francisco was founded in 1529, soon after the Spanish settlement of Granada, and is the oldest religious foundation of its kind in Nicaragua. Its long history is one of repeated destruction: it was burned by the buccaneer Henry Morgan's men in the seventeenth century and again during the occupation of the city by William Walker in 1856. Rebuilt each time, it later served as a barracks, a school and the seat of a university before restoration turned the cloisters into a cultural centre and museum.
The museum's outstanding holding is the group of basalt statues brought from the island of Zapatera in Lake Nicaragua, carved between roughly AD 800 and 1200. Some twenty-eight monoliths stand in ranks in a covered gallery, human figures crowned or merged with jaguars, crocodiles and birds. Other rooms display pre-Columbian ceramics, a large relief model of Nicaragua, colonial religious art and a collection of primitivist paintings from the Solentiname archipelago, all arranged around two planted courtyards.
Highlights
- Some twenty-eight basalt statues from Zapatera island, AD 800-1200
- Cloisters of the convent founded in 1529, the country's oldest
- Primitivist paintings from the Solentiname archipelago
- Relief model of Nicaragua and pre-Columbian ceramics
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