Basilica and Convent of San Francisco

Towering over Lima’s historic center in striking canary-yellow and bone-white, the seventeenth-century Basilica and Convent of San Francisco stands as one of South America’s finest surviving monuments to Spanish Baroque architecture. Consecrated in 1673 and remarkably resilient against the seismic tremors that leveled much of the capital in 1687 and 1746, its monumental stone portal opens into a contemplative world of colonial grandeur. Inside, two-tiered cloister courtyards are wrapped in over 25,000 glazed Sevillian tiles imported from Spain in 1620, their vivid cobalt patterns glowing beneath shaded arcades. Overhead, a monumental Mudéjar cupola, intricately carved from Nicaraguan cedar and assembled without a single nail, crowns the main staircase, filtering shafts of golden light into the cloister's silent corridors. Descending beneath the chapels, the air turns distinctly cold, carrying the damp, earthen scent of antiquity as visitors enter the subterranean catacombs. Operating as the city’s principal resting place until 1808, these brick-and-limestone vaults house the remains of roughly 25,000 souls. Travelers navigate narrow, vaulted passageways flanked by deep stone ossuary pits, where Franciscan friars meticulously organized femurs, ribs, and skulls into hypnotic, geometric patterns to maximize structural space. Returning above ground, the colonial narrative continues in the refectory, where visitors encounter Diego de la Puente’s seventeenth-century canvas of the Last Supper, an Andean syncretic masterpiece depicting Christ and the Apostles dining on roasted guinea pig, papas, and native chili peppers.