Santuario Nuestra Señora del Carmen
Striped Gothic sanctuary crowdfunded by public bazaars, its colonial chapel reborn as a theater.
This guide to the Santuario Nuestra Señora del Carmen in Bogotá opens in 1934, when Bogotá began tearing down a two-hundred-year-old Carmelite convent on this corner to build something grander for the city's anniversary, and a crowd gathered to stop the demolition. You'll hear how Salesian priests with no budget turned to bazaars, raffles and a plea to Congress, and how the architect Giovanni Buscaglione, an Italian Salesian brother who had studied churches from Florence to Constantinople, stretched every peso with cheap materials rather than carved stone. Look for the bell tower's twisting columns, borrowed from Córdoba's mosque and Sienese cathedrals.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.