Best tourist attractions in Peru - Ayacucho - Vilcashuamán
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Best tourist attractions in Peru - Ayacucho - Historical Center
Check out our website to find the perfect tour in Peru for yourself. We are professional tour operator with 10 years of experience. We offer short trips from 1-day long as well as thrilling treks up to 20 days! Plan your unforgettable Peru adventure right now! For more videos about Best Tourist Attractions in Peru check our YouTube channel
Thanks for watching Best tourist attractions in Peru - Ayacucho - Historical Center
Day9 (Quito) - Escorial of the Andes SanFranciscoChurch 10 Day Ecuador & Amazon Adventure (May 2014)
Our next stop while touring QUITO on Friday (May 30, 2014): San Francisco church aka Church and Convent/ Monastery of St. Francis.
The Church and Monastery of St. Francis (Iglesia y Monasterio de San Francisco), commonly known as El San Francisco, is a 16th-century Roman Catholic complex in Quito, Ecuador.
It fronts onto its namesake Plaza de San Francisco.
The imposing structure has the distinction of being the largest architectural ensemble among the historical structures of colonial Latin America and for this reason is sometimes known as El Escorial of the New World.
The style evolved over almost 150 years of construction (1534-1680) through earthquakes and changes in artistic fashion.
The Church houses the city's beloved Virgin of Quito (1734).
San Francisco, the most imposing of all Quito's architectural monuments, is at once a temple, a series of chapels, and a convent.
All this together takes up nearly two (2) whole blocks, and rises up above a wide stone paved court, creating so noble an impression that Ernesto La Orden called it the Escorial of the Andes.
Shortly after the foundation of the city in 1536, Fray Jodoco Ricke began the construction of the temple and the convent, helped by architects and craftsmen like Fray Francisco Benítez, who was in charge of the work throughout the last quarter of the sixteenth century and finished it off in 1605. He also carved the benches and the figures of the choir.
On entering the church, you find yourself under a low ceiling, decorated with small paintings, surrounded by ornamental groupings of cherubim arid flowers, all in the Italian style.
The central nave is high, and the justly famous transept is supported by four main columns.
There are chapels on either side, all with beautiful altarpieces. That of the main or high altar is covered in carvings, and curves around the presbytery.
The carving of the great nave was of curved mudejar art until the earthquake of 1755 made it necessary to replace that with the present one. The original work can still be seen in the dome of the transept. A separate and very detailed guidebook would be needed to deal with all the artistic gems kept in the church and the convent of San Francisco. Those of the convent have now been arranged into a museum.
The atrium runs from one side of the square to the other, and the facade of the temple and convent rise above it, with a high retaining wall built of solid stone and interrupted in the middle to give access to the plaza by means of a double fanshaped staircase.
The facade of the church is austere, in accordance with the Renaissance canons of Greco-roman neo-classicism. The lower part has a line of Doric columns which merge with the retaining wall, the upper has slightly shorter Ionic columns.
There is hardly any adornment only the rope belt of St. Francis which surrounds the great window above the main entrance, the statues of St. Peter and St. Paul, on either side of the window, and the figure of Christ above, all carved in stone.