Santa Catalina Monastery
Walled convent city of painted sillar streets and cloisters in the centre of Arequipa.
The monastery of Santa Catalina de Siena was founded in 1579 for Dominican nuns, many of them daughters of wealthy Arequipa families who brought servants and furnishings with them. It grew into a walled precinct of about twenty thousand square metres, effectively a small town with its own streets, squares, kitchens, laundry and cemetery. Built largely of sillar, the white volcanic stone of the region, its walls are washed in deep red, blue and ochre that give the interiors their distinctive character.
Reforms in the late nineteenth century ended the practice of private cells with servants, and after earthquake damage the complex was repaired and opened to visitors in 1970, while a small community of nuns continues to live in a closed section. Visitors follow lanes named after Spanish cities such as Sevilla, Córdoba and Toledo past cloisters, a picture gallery of colonial painting and the cells of individual nuns. The monastery lies within the UNESCO-listed historical centre of Arequipa.
Highlights
- Streets and squares inside a walled precinct of about 20,000 square metres
- Sillar walls washed in red, blue and ochre
- Cloisters and cells furnished as the nuns used them
- Gallery of colonial painting from the Arequipa and Cusco schools
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