Ermita Del Cabrero - Iglesia Nuestra Señora De Las Mercedes

This guide to the Ermita Del Cabrero in Cartagena opens with a question: why would the wife of a sitting president strike a private bargain with a statue? It goes back to 1885, when cannon fire from a rebel siege rattled the city and Soledad Roman de Nuñez made a vow to Our Lady of Mercedes rather than wait for the army to act. Her husband, President Rafael Nuñez, commissioned architect Mariano de Santamaría to design the neo-Gothic hermitage, with its pointed arches and twin bell towers borrowed from a style almost no one else in the old walled city was using.