Museo y Catacumbas del Convento de San Francisco de Asís de Cusco
Colonial convent crypts of stacked skulls beneath a monumental painted family tree of coats of arms.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Museum and Catacombs of the Convento de San Francisco de Asís in Cusco opens with a puzzle: how did a religious order that vowed total poverty end up this rich? Downstairs, in the crypts, unnamed friars and townspeople lie stacked in simple niches; upstairs hangs an enormous genealogical tree of coats of arms, painted for the wealthy families who bought their names a place in this house of the poor. Along the way you'll hear about the convent's founding in 1572 and its rebuilding after the earthquake of 1650, when its church filled with paintings by local Cusco School masters. Stand between the two floors and you're standing between two very different kinds of burial.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Plaza San Francisco
Colonial plaza and garden facing a Franciscan convent that hides South America's largest oil painting.
Monasterio de Santa Catalina de Nuestra Señora de Los Remedios
Colonial convent of cloistered Dominican nuns raised over the ruins of an Inca house of chosen women.
Templo y Convento La Merced Cusco
Baroque cloister guarding a jewel-crusted colonial monstrance topped by a giant carved pearl.
Church of the Society of Jesus
Baroque church of pink volcanic stone raised directly atop an Inca royal palace's foundations.
Cusco Cathedral
Colonial cathedral raised over an Inca palace, its walls quarried from a nearby dismantled fortress.
Saint Peter the Apostle of Andahuaylillas
Colonial parish church whose painted ceiling and murals mix Christian saints with native fruit, birds, and llamas.