Iglesia Museo Santa Clara

The church was built between 1629 and 1674 for a Poor Clares convent, and what survives is the interior of an enclosed religious house rather than a public parish - a single barrel-vaulted nave with no side aisles, the walls and ceiling covered almost entirely in painted decoration and gilded woodwork, and around a hundred and forty-eight paintings and polychrome sculptures still in place. The nuns' choir behind a screen at the west end is where the community heard mass unseen. The convent was suppressed in the nineteenth century and the state took the building; it has been run as a museum since 1983 rather than as a working church, so the fittings stayed where they were rather than being dispersed.

What you'll find

• A fully decorated barrel vault - painted and gilded end to end.
• Around 148 paintings and sculptures - still in their original positions.
• The enclosed nuns' choir - screened from the nave.
• A convent church, not a parish one - built for a closed community.

When to go

Year round; closed Mondays. An hour.

Good to know

It is a single room - the visit is short. Lighting is deliberately low to protect the paintings. Photography rules are strict. It closes on Mondays and public holidays.

Nearby

The Plaza de Bolivar is a block away; the Gold Museum is north.