10/20: Lima's Cathedral, Religious Art Museum & Archbishop's Palace

When we left the Larco Museum around 3, the sun was finally shining which was a welcome change to the dreary skies we’d seen for so long. Our luck with transportation certainly held once again when we managed to catch a bus back to the Miraflores area of Lima after less than a minute’s wait to go visit the Basilica Cathedral and Archbishop's Palace! 

Another photo of MALI, the city's art museum where we'd spent the morning:

And, in the same corner, of the Palace of Justice:

Seeing these magnificent classical buildings, made us feel like we were in Paris and not in the capital of Peru!

I remember being so surprised when we saw so many Scotiabank branches all over Peru and other countries in South America, especially since that was the only North American bank represented on the entire continent until we reached Brazil almost two months later. I haven't lived in Canada for more than three plus decades but, even when returning to visit family and friends, Scotiabank never seemed to command a huge presence.

After a 45-minute schlep through so much of the downtown core, we finally made it to the Cathedral located in the Plaza de Armas, one of Latin America’s most beautiful squares. We'd only seen the exterior of the Cathedral on our first visit to the square as it was closed because of a huge celebration. 

When Lima was founded, a piece of land for the construction of the main church was allocated. Lima began life as a small settlement and that first church was still a very far cry from what become the first metropolitan cathedral of the Americas. The current cathedral, the third large scale church built on the same site, was dedicated to St. John the Evangelist.

Lima’s cathedral has become the city’s emblematic monument serving as both its religious focal monument and the treasure chest of its material wealth. For entire generations of Peruvians, it was their spiritual home and the lives of the population were regulated by its bells until well into the 20th century.

Superbly carved choir stalls made from Nicaraguan wood in the 17th century bordered the intricate main altar which was sculpted in 1806.

The first chapel we noticed was originally the Baptistery of the Cathedral. It was fitted out in 1891 to contain the carved wooden sepulcher of Francisco Pizarro, Lima’s founder, who was murdered in 1541 by a mob from a rival political faction. Once his actual remains were verified in 1977, they were placed in the chapel. 

 

As I mentioned previously, just click on any photo to enlarge the image. 

The chapel contained beautiful panels of Venetian mosaics with scenes of Peru's discovery and Pizarro's coat of arms.

This, the Chapel of St. Toribio de Mogrevjo, was just one of 15 chapels in the cathedral!

The large baroque altarpiece of La Concepcion from 1654 was the highlight of the Our Lady of the Evangelization Chapel, so named by Pope John Paul 11 in 1988.

The chapel contained the oldest statue of the Virgin Mary in Peru. In 1985, the cathedral received the silver crown which the Pope only allowed because the residents of Lima venerated the Virgin Mary, according to a guide I overheard.

Another positively spellbinding chapel:

An image of the Virgin from Seville, Spain, from the last years of the 19th century was part of the Chapel of Our Virgin of La Antigua.

Included in the Cathedral's admission price was a visit to the Museum of Religious Art of the Lima Cathedral accessed from the cathedral. The museum only had its origins in the 1970s with art pieces from the church's private collections and liturgical and ornamental objects. One of the highlights of the museum was a painting from 1724 that included the faces of the 13 Inca rulers with a lineup of Spanish kings located in the Antisacristy.

The Main Sacristy:

In the Chapter Room was the Gallery of the Archbishops aka the circular paintings and ...

the series of the Final Judgement paintings from 1625-30 and a display cabinet with Pope John Paul 11's belongings.

The room's Christ statue was carved from ivory by the Philippines Art School.

The museum's Brazzini Room contained sculptures and ornamental items from the 17th and 18th centuries. 

The entrance to the Cathedral also included admission to tour the Archbishop’s Palace next door. Unfortunately, we only had a few minutes to walk through before it closed. The site dated from early 1535 when Pizarro founded the City of Kings around what became Lima’s main square or Plaza Mayor and designated an area for the main church. The adjacent piece of land was reserved for the Priest’s House which years later would become the Archbishop’s Palace. 

Since the Archbishop’s Palace for more than 400 years was where the evangelization and pastoral policy for Peru and all of South America was conceived and implemented, it was the most significant focal point for the spreading of religious faith.

Because of the precarious state of preservation of the archbishop’s palace in 1924, it was demolished and the current place was built becoming one of the first examples of the neoclassical style in Peru. In 2009, the palace was adapted to house the new Lima Archbishop’s Palace Museum. 

The Palace contained an impressive museum of religious art and many, many rooms decorated with portraits, ornamental objects and furniture from different periods, some of which dated from the 16th century.

The Archbishop's Hall:

The Santiago Apostle Hall:

The Archbishop's Secretary Hall: 

Note the ancient typewriter!

The Holy Family created in the 16th century: 

Because we visited the Palace just before closing, we were fortunate to virtually have the entire palace to ourselves!

Temporary exhibitions in the Palace were designed to promote and strengthen Catholic faith through art and culture. Both of us were struck by the beauty of the wood sculptures created by Martin Alfonso de Mesa y Juan Garcia Saiguero between 1617-1627 in the temporary space.

This polychromatic wood panel depicted The Visitation, the term used in Christianity to refer to the visit made by the Virgin Mary, pregnant with Jesus, to her relative Elizabeth, pregnant in turn by John the Baptist. It is a passage from the Gospel of Luke, also known as the Visitation of Mary.

This panel marked the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Annunciation of Our Lady or the Annunciation of the Lord, the Christian celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus, the son of God.

Most people close down bars; we, however, close down churches and other religious institutions!

While the Cathedral was absolutely stunning in every way, both Steven and I found it overwhelming and over-the-top. We far preferred the more intimate Parish Tabernacle located immediately beside its larger counterpart.

The Tabernacle was the perfect opportunity to reflect on the outstanding beauty of the Cathedral and Palace and to acknowledge once again how lucky we were to witness such magnificent architectural gems.

Although it resembled the many nearby colonial-era buildings on the square, the Municipalidad de Lima or City Hall was only constructed in 1944. 

The Presidential Palace:

From the sublime to the ridiculous: a gangnam style dancer next to the Iglesia Merced as we walked back to the bus!

Having spent the last three days exploring Lima's majestic churches and museums, we looked really forward to getting away from the capital city to tour more of the country's sights in the Sacred Valley, the Amazon and elsewhere in the coming weeks. Keep tuned!

Next post: Discovering Peru's Sacred Valley near Machu Picchu.

Posted on December 30th, 2017, from Littleton, Colorado.