Anyone who arrives at the Monastery of Santa Catalina without knowing what to expect experiences an impact that no prior description fully prepares them for. From the street, the monastery is simply a high sillar wall that occupies an entire block in Arequipa’s historic center. Nothing on the outside suggests what is inside. When you pass through the main door and your eyes adjust to the change in light, a cobblestone alley painted deep blue appears, turning to the right and disappearing behind a corner. In the background, the bell tower. On the sides, thick wooden doors with wrought iron locks. And the silence: the same silence those corridors had for nearly four centuries when no visitor walked through them.
Contents
Foundation: 1579 and the money of a widow
On September 10, 1579, when Arequipa had been founded for only 39 years, Viceroy Francisco de Toledo authorized the creation of the private monastery of nuns of the Order of Santa Catalina of Siena on four lots in the city center. The viceregal authorization was the legal requirement, but the real driving force of the project was the money and determination of Doña María de Guzmán, widow of the encomendero Diego Hernández de Mendoza, who donated all her assets before entering the monastery as its first prioress.
This detail is important: Santa Catalina was not founded by a religious order arriving from Spain nor by ecclesiastical decree, but by the will and wealth of an Arequipeña woman who turned her widowhood into a construction project of monumental scale. This private and female origin explains many of the monastery’s characteristics in the following centuries: the standard of living of its first inhabitants, the exclusivity of entry, and the autonomy with which it operated for generations.
In its early years, the monastery received Creole women, mestizas, and daughters of curacas with strong economic power. The sillar used in construction came from two different volcanoes: the white sillar from Chachani and the pink sillar from Misti, which explains the variation of colors that can still be seen today in different sections of the complex.
Three centuries of enclosure: how life was inside
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the monastery grew into something without precedent in any other city of the viceroyalty: a self-sufficient community with its own streets, internal plazas, kitchens, laundries, ovens, orchards, and chapels distributed across a 20,000-square-meter space. In the 18th century, it housed around 300 women between nuns and servants.
The choir nuns, those of higher rank and from the wealthiest families, lived in conditions that were far from austere. Their cells were actually small houses with separate rooms, valuable objects brought from Europe, fine tableware, and personal servants. The dowries that families paid for their daughters’ entry were substantial, and that money sustained both the monastery’s life and the standard of living of its inhabitants. The white-veiled nuns, of lower rank, lived more austerely but within the same physical space.
This coexistence between religious enclosure and a certain domestic luxury was the monastery’s most distinctive feature during its early centuries and also the one that generated the most controversy. In 1871, Pope Pius IX sent Sister Josefa Cadena from the convent of Santa Catalina in Úbeda to modernize convent life and eliminate the privileges accumulated over two centuries. During this process, servants were freed, personal luxury items were removed, and a rule of life closer to the original spirit of the Dominican order was established. The nuns who did not accept the new conditions were allowed to leave.
The monastery suffered damage in the earthquake of 1582, just three years after its foundation, and was restored repeatedly after the earthquakes that affected Arequipa over the centuries. In the 1960s, an earthquake caused significant damage that was repaired with support from the World Monuments Fund.
Opening to the public: 1970
For nearly four centuries, the monastery was a completely closed space. Arequipeños who lived just meters from its walls had no access and no idea of what was inside. In 1970, under the management of a private company, the convent opened its doors to the public for the first time, with a visitable area of more than 20,000 square meters. The rest, the northern sector where the community of nuns still living in enclosure resides, remains inaccessible to visitors.
This opening was a major event for Arequipa. The city suddenly discovered that it had, in its historic center, a space of architectural scale and richness that no one outside its walls had ever seen. The internal streets named after Spanish cities such as Toledo, Granada, Málaga, and Seville, the courtyards painted in intense colors that no exterior façade hinted at, and the coherence of the whole as an autonomous urban space surprised even the Arequipeños who saw it for the first time.
The route: what you see inside
The main entrance on Calle Santa Catalina 301 leads through a passage with thick walls to the first spaces of the complex. The route does not have a mandatory linear order but rather a sequence of spaces that visitors can explore with more or less freedom depending on whether they go with a guide or independently.
The Patio del Silencio is the first large-scale space after the entrance. Its whitewashed walls and the open sky above create an atmosphere of reflection that does not depend on faith to be effective: it also works for those who arrive without any religious interest. The Cloister of the Orange Trees has a central fountain and the trees that give the space its name, with a vegetal presence that contrasts with the hardness of the surrounding sillar.
Calle Sevilla is the most photographed section of the monastery: a narrow alley with walls painted in intense ocher red where sunlight enters at an angle and produces clean shadows on the sillar. At certain times of the morning, this alley has a quality of light that no photographic filter can improve and no verbal description can fully convey.
The restored cells allow visitors to see how nuns of different ranks lived. The more elaborate ones have several rooms, a fireplace, their own kitchen, and original colonial objects. The simpler ones have only the essentials for a life of contemplation. The difference between them is so visible that it inevitably prompts reflection on how the social hierarchy of the colonial period was reproduced even within the walls of a cloistered convent.
The kitchen has its original clay pots, stone stoves, and utensils from daily monastery life. The laundry area has the ceramic jars where the nuns washed clothes with water brought from the irrigation channels that ran through the complex. These domestic spaces bring visitors closest to the real life of the monastery because they show not the solemn moments but the everyday ones: water, fire, food, the manual work that sustained the life of the community day after day.
The painting rooms display canvases from the Cusco School of the 17th and 18th centuries, paintings of virgins and saints with the unmistakable style of this Andean-colonial pictorial tradition. There are also pieces of liturgical silverwork, textiles, and religious objects that completed the monastery’s spiritual life.
The night visit
On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the monastery’s schedule is extended, allowing for a night visit that has a completely different character from the daytime tour. Warm artificial lighting over the sillar and courtyards creates an atmosphere that combines the theatrical with the genuinely evocative. The same alleyways that during the day have an almost Mediterranean clarity become denser and more intimate at night. For those who have already visited during the day, the night version adds a perspective that justifies a second entry.
Hours, prices, and practical information
The monastery is open Monday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with last entry at 5 p.m. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, hours extend until 7 p.m., with last entry at 6 p.m., for the night visit. It closes on Good Friday, December 25, and January 1.
General admission costs 40 soles for both nationals and foreigners. Peruvian adults over 60 pay 20 soles. Foreign visitors between 7 and 21 years old also pay 20 soles. Children under 7 enter free. On the 10th of each month and the last Sunday of each month there is a promotional price for Peruvians with ID. Tickets can be purchased at the ticket office or online, and major credit and debit cards are accepted.
The guide service is not included in the ticket and is hired separately at the entrance. The additional cost ranges from 20 to 35 soles depending on the language and duration. Available guides speak Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese. The guided tour lasts between one and a half and two hours. The self-guided tour with the monastery map takes a similar amount of time but allows visitors to stop at the spaces that interest them most without following a group pace.
The monastery is located at Calle Santa Catalina 301 in Arequipa’s historic center, about 600 meters from the Plaza de Armas, walking along the street that gives it its name. From any hotel in the historic center, it can be reached on foot in 5 to 10 minutes.
When to go and how much time to spend
The best time to visit the monastery is between 9 and 11 in the morning, when the light enters from the east at the most favorable angle to appreciate the architecture and before the larger midday groups arrive. The second-best time is after 3:30 in the afternoon, when the sunset light warms the color of the sillar and the courtyards are less crowded.
For a complete visit that includes the main areas of the route, the painting rooms, and the restored cells, you should plan between two and three hours. Those traveling with children or preferring a more selective visit can see the essentials in about an hour and a half. The monastery has a café inside where you can rest and have something before continuing or after finishing the visit.
Peru Sites includes the Monastery of Santa Catalina in its Arequipa itineraries as part of the full journey to Cusco and Machu Picchu.