Jesuit Mission of La Santísima Trinidad del Paraná
UNESCO-listed Guaraní-Jesuit reduction whose red sandstone church keeps its carved frieze of angel musicians.
The reduction of La Santísima Trinidad del Paraná was founded in 1706 and moved to this hill above the Paraná valley soon afterwards. Laid out to the standard Jesuit-Guaraní plan, it centred on a great plaza framed by the church, the college, the cemetery, the workshops and long rows of dwellings for Guaraní families. Work on the main church began in the 1740s to designs by the Milanese architect Juan Bautista Prímoli and was completed after his death by Antonio Forcada. The community was abandoned after the Jesuits were expelled from Spanish America in 1767.
Built in red sandstone, the church retains its shell of walls, the doorway, a stone pulpit and a celebrated frieze of angels playing the clavichord, maracas and trumpets, carved by Guaraní sculptors. An earlier church survives beside it with its bell tower, and the outlines of the indigenous houses and the plaza can still be walked. Trinidad was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1993 together with Jesús de Tavarangue, and is managed with San Cosme y San Damián as a single visitor circuit.
Highlights
- Carved sandstone frieze of angel musicians in the main church
- Stone pulpit and sculpted doorway by Guaraní craftsmen
- Bell tower of the earlier church beside the main ruins
- UNESCO World Heritage site, inscribed in 1993
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