Santa Catalina Convent Arequipa

The monastery of St. Catherine of Siena, or Santa Catalina Convent, is a religious holiday resort located in the historic centre of Arequipa, Arequipa, Peru Department.

Santa Catalina Convent History

Founded September 10, 1579 by an agreement between Cabildo justice and Arequipa Regiment and the bishopric of Cusco and thanks to the donation of assets of doña María de Guzmán, widow of Don Diego Hernández de Mendoza. She was the first prioress of the monastery, position he held during the first six years of operation, numbered from 2 October 1580 that uttered their vows. In this monastery entering women who so wished, but the founding document they pointed out that they should be Spanish women. They should give a dowry of thousand pesos of silver rehearsed and marked and 100 current weights for food. In the middle of the 18th century the population consisted of fifty-seven black veil, eighteen of white veil, fifty-one donated and two hundred maidens religious and lay people service.

Convent Santa Catalina - Arequipa Peru

Monastery of Santa Catalina

Its construction as Citadel made gradually, on the four plots that acquired Cabildo justice and Arequipa Regiment in 1568 to a monastery of nuns should call Our Lady of Grace and it didn't. The Santa Catalina monastery is a showcase of four centuries of Arequipa architecture. Apparently the intrusive cells that form the Citadel began to build after the earthquakes that destroyed the environment almost completely in 1600 (February 19), and the eruption of Huaynaputina volcano. Parents or relatives of the nuns did build their daughters life environments. Therefore, between the 17TH and 19th centuries religious arranged the sale of their cells to other religious. The first documentary was that made Sor Ana Zegarra sold his cell in 50 pesos to the religious Ginesa Mendoza in 1631. Destroyed by the earthquakes affecting Arequipa, rebuilt countless times, using his remains. Several bishops, among them Juan Almoguera made build different environments of the monastery. It has an area of 20.426 square meters. At the time was the largest population in this convent lived here around 500 women of which only 180 were religious, the rest were maidens who served the religious girls living there as boarders of a boarding school and refugee women allowed in the convent for right of asylum. The Santa Catalina convent, wrapped in a veil of mystery and silence until 1970 when a large part of the convent opened its doors to the public. Religious allowed a privately administered. Nuns are still living in the area of the North of the complex.

Much has been restored in order to achieve a better attraction of the public, while preserving its plant and original features. The small streets and cloisters are full of colorful flowers and the walls are painted in fresh tints. The narrow alleys lead to various parts of the convent are facing picturesque sites and sites be and sleep with the original furniture.

Some visitors stay all day reviving the still life beyond this convent or walk in internal streets and are lost in the way of the time. This Convent is located on the street of the same name near the Plaza de Armas.

Inside you can see the cloister of the blessed Sor Ana de Los Angeles of Monteagudo which was beatified in the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1985 due to his exemplary conventual life and the attribution of some miracles. One approved by the Church, was a healing of uterine cancer in the first third of the last century. The favoured, doña María Vera of Jarrín, lived more thirty years after the prodigy.

Convent Santa Catalina - Arequipa Peru

Santa Catalina Convent Architecture

The monastery originally occupied an area of 20,000 square meters. The charm of this citadel lies in the strength and plasticity of their volumes and the beauty that teachers and alarifes achieved in the architecture of these sites through arizants solutions as the buttresses or construction of encircling arcades settled on pillars.

In interiors, domes and Vault covers considerably expand the space and increase the feeling of strength of buildings. Perceived, especially in the area of the alleys, the intervention of Masons who, lacking a proper architectural design, they were raising walls, roofs, cells, courtyards and simple approach covers.

From the outside shows how the same architecture has set a strict division between the convent and the outside. A wide Ashlar wall surrounds the Citadel.

The present building has magnificent pieces of art as a Baroque altar of carved and gilded wood, a body and three streets that adorn the Chapel and several paintings of the Cusco School.