CATACOMBS

Yesterday a couple of friends and I went downtown to see the Church of San Francisco. The church was built in the 1600's (1673 I think?) and belongs to the Franciscan order of monks. The church is instantly recognizable by the yellow paint job and the hundreds of pigeons that are outside the church. There are even people outside the church selling seeds to feed the pigeons!

the outside facade of the church complete with pigeons

closer view of the front of the church

  It is required to take a guided tour of the church (you can't just wander around by yourself) and you aren't allowed to take pictures. Luckily, some of my friends had cameras and took some sneaky pictures!

The tour started out with the library. It was basically my dream library -- balconies, spiral staircases, everything. There are something like 25,000 books in the library and some of them PREDATE THE SPANISH CONQUEST! There are also books in multiple languages (Latin, English, Spanish, Italian, French etc.)! You could tell the books were super old too...they were like raggedy and faded.

The tour also covered all of the normal church tour stuff - old art of Saint this and Saint that, the chairs where all of the monks sat to do ceremonies (which looked very uncomfortable by the way -- I guess 16th century monks didn't believe in seat cushions).

But, the best part of the tour by far was the CATACOMBS under the church. The catacombs were actually part of the original cemetery system of Lima. There are something like 75,000 bodies buried under the church, most of which are placed in exposed pits arranged in geometric shapes like the ones below:

one of many pits of bones - this one arranged in a creepy geometric circle

another bone pit

There were also rooms off to the side of the path full of bones, as well as shelves full of bones in little rooms off to the side. In one of the shelves I could see the remains of some kind of cloth -- maybe clothing?

The cemetery was in use until 1808 when a new city cemetery was built outside of Lima.

Reflecting the colonial history of racism and exclusion, the bodies in the catacombs were only of Spanish citizens -- indigenous people were not allowed to be buried here.

The tour guide walked through really fast so we decided to stay behind and take more time to explore -- this is how we got to take these pictures! We got a little turned around without the guide but we found our way out eventually.

Then came the funniest part of the day. We went into the sanctuary of the church to look at all of the shrines to various saints and jesus and mary and all those important Bible people. There was some sort of ceremony going on -- a renewal of vows or something like that -- and the priest was doing a monologue when a dog ran in from outside. The owner was chasing after it but it wouldn't come back to her. The dog ran up to the front and started trying to drag the red carpet under the altar away with its teeth. It also ran up and around the priests, who amazingly just kept on speaking as if nothing was happening. It was pretty funny.

Yesterday was also Saint Rose of Lima day (a national holiday). Saint Rose was born in Lima in 1586. She was really extreme in her devotion -- when she was admired for her beauty she apparently cut her hair and smeared pepper on her face to scare off potential suitors because she wanted to devote herself to the Church. She devoted her life to helping the needy in the community. She wanted to become a nun but her father didn't allow it so she instead entered some lower order of the church. She also apparently wore a crown made of silver with spikes on the inside to copy the crown of thorns worn by Jesus. She died when she was 31, and her funeral was attended by all the public authorities in Lima. She was canonized in 1671, making her the first person born in the Americas to become a saint. She is the patron saint of the Americas and of specifically of Lima!

When we left the church we ran into a procession in the main square. There were pall bearers carrying this huge statue of Saint Rose accompanied by a marching band and soldiers on horses! 

procession of people carrying a statue of Saint Rose of Lima

After lunch we went to the weirdest places in Lima - Mini-mundo, a park with tiny replicas of carious places in Lima and the rest of Peru.....yeah it was as weird as it sounds. Some people in our group were really excited about it but honestly....I didn't really get the appeal as much. But it was still very fun and gave us some good ideas about places we wanted to visit! The coolest part was a replica of Machu Picchu, complete with tiny tourists:

tiny plastic tourists in "Machu Picchu"

"Machu Picchu" replica

So that was my day yesterday. Now I have to do all the reading that I should have done yesterday....