The Santa Catalina de Siena Convent was founded in 1579, less than 40 years after the Spanish arrived in Arequipa. The cloistered nuns had private suites with sitting, sleeping and cooking areas. Most had a personal servant or slave; some as many as four. One of the members, Sister Ana de Los Angeles Monteagado (?-1686), was beatified in 1985.
The convent opened to the public in 1970 after extensive restoration work following damaging earthquakes in 1958 and 1960. At one time, several hundred women lived in the sprawling, walled complex that was a city within the city; now only a few nuns live in the new monastery still walled off from the tourists during the day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Catalina_Monastery
This monastery was far different from any other I had ever visited, and not just with respect to size. First and foremost among the differences between the medieval abbeys of Europe, the Spanish missions of California, and this Spanish monastery in Peru is the presence of rich, vivid colors. Almost all, if not all, outdoor spaces were painted with a blue to match a cloudless sky or a clay red highly reminiscent of Utah’s most vivid canyons and arches. A few splashes of lemon yellow could also be found.
Cloister of the Orange Trees
Santa Catalina walkway
Living accommodations were also far different from the whitewashed dormitory of Europe or the spartan adobe-walled cell of California. The families of most of the women who lived here paid hefty dowries to get them in and provided their daughters with fine furniture and other household goods, along with servants to do basic household chores like cooking, cleaning and laundry.
A cell with a piano
- A cell with a sofa and table
A cell with a painting in the seating area