Basilica and Convent of San Francisco

Basilica and Convent of San Francisco is Lima’s central Franciscan precinct, begun in the 17th c. and reshaped after the earthquakes of 1687 and 1746 into the Baroque image the city remembers. Its quiet cloisters, learned library, and vast catacombs—used as a colonial cemetery until 1808—trace how prayer, scholarship, and death were woven into everyday life in the viceroyal capital, and how Catholic art and ritual adapted to a Peruvian world.