Monastery of Santa Catalina de Siena

The Monastery of Santa Catalina de Siena, founded in 1579, is a 16th-century Dominican convent in Arequipa, Peru. It features colonial architecture, an art gallery, and offers guided tours.

Planning your visit

Santa Catalina is a walled city within a city — twenty thousand square metres of streets, squares, cloisters and cells behind high walls in the middle of Arequipa, founded in 1579 and effectively closed to outsiders until 1970.

For four centuries it housed daughters of wealthy Spanish colonial families, who arrived with dowries and, in many cases, servants; the wealthier nuns had private cells with kitchens, and the establishment was notorious enough that Rome sent a reforming superior in 1871 to impose actual monastic discipline.

The buildings are painted in deep cobalt and terracotta, built from sillar, the white volcanic stone that gives Arequipa its nickname of the white city, and walking the lanes between them is unlike any other convent visit.

A small community of nuns still lives in one section.

Evening visits with the cells lit by candle are offered. Allow two hours. The main booking is a museum ticket. Current availability is listed below.