Basílica and Convent of San Francisco |: Lima Travel Guide

A yellow facade and a plaza full of pigeons

From the small square at the corner of Jirón Lampa and Jirón Ancash, the church front fills your view. It is a baroque stone portal in carved grey, set between two squat towers on a facade painted the warm yellow that runs through Lima’s old centre. There are usually pigeons on the paving and vendors along the edges of the square.

The church was finished in the 1670s. It is one of the few colonial buildings in Lima to survive the city’s earthquakes in recognisable shape. It sits inside the Historic Centre of Lima, which UNESCO lists as a World Heritage Site, and it is one of the most visited sights in the city. Don’t expect to have it to yourself.

Inside the convent

You see the convent museum on a guided tour, and the route follows a set order. You move from room to room behind your guide, with no wandering off. Plan on roughly an hour, including any wait for a tour to start.

The highlights usually include:

• The main cloister, lined with glazed tiles brought from Seville in the 1600s, with painted scenes from the life of Saint Francis above them.
• The carved cedar dome over the main staircase, in the Mudéjar style that Spain inherited from Moorish builders.
• The library, a long double-height room. Wooden balconies and a spiral stair run up to shelves of leather-bound volumes, some of them centuries old.
• Religious paintings from the colonial period, hung in the refectory and side rooms.

Down into the catacombs

The tour ends below ground, and it’s the part most people come for. The crypts served as Lima’s cemetery for colonial-era residents before the city opened a public one in the early 1800s. They were rediscovered in the twentieth century.

The passages are narrow, with low brick vaults and dim lighting. Bones lie sorted in stone pits, and in some pits skulls and femurs are laid out in concentric rings. Tall visitors will need to duck in places. Anyone uneasy in tight spaces should know there is no quick way out mid-tour.

Getting past the queue at San Francisco

Your timing matters more here than at most Lima sights. On weekdays it’s calmest between 9am and 11am. On weekends the quiet window is shorter, 9am to 10am. Try not to arrive between 12pm and 6pm on a Saturday or Sunday, because that’s when tour groups stack up at the ticket window.

How it works on the ground:

• Buy tickets at the window by the museum entrance, which sits to the side of the church doors. Current prices are posted there and on the convent’s official channels.
• Ask for the next tour in your language. Tours run in Spanish and English, and the English ones fill up first at busy times.
• Leave the camera down. Photography is not allowed inside the museum or the catacombs, and guides do enforce it.
• Dress for a working church. The basilica still holds Mass. Covered shoulders and quiet voices are expected if you step into the nave, and you should keep to the back during a service.
• Tip your guide if the tour was good. It’s customary, though not required.

At the moment the convent opens 9am–6pm every day of the week. Church museums in Lima change their hours around religious holidays, so check the official listing before you plan a late visit.

Reaching Jirón Lampa

Most visitors stay in Miraflores or Barranco and travel into the centre for the day. A taxi or ride-hail car gets you there quickest, but the trip can take anything from 30 minutes to over an hour in Lima traffic. Ask to be dropped at the Iglesia de San Francisco, on the corner of Lampa and Ancash.

The Metropolitano rapid bus runs along the Vía Expresa from Miraflores to the historic centre. From its central stations you walk a few blocks east to the church. Keep your phone and bag close in the crowded streets around the stations.

Around the corner

You can easily spend a full morning within a few blocks of here. The Plaza Mayor is about a two-minute walk west. The Government Palace on its north side holds its changing of the guard around midday. Opposite the palace, the Cathedral of Lima and the Archbishop’s Palace, with its carved wooden balconies, are worth adding.

Head north from San Francisco and you reach the Rímac River and the old Desamparados railway station, now home to the Casa de la Literatura Peruana. Between the plaza and the station, the colonial mansion Casa de Aliaga is still lived in by the family that has owned it since the 1500s. For lunch, head down Jirón de la Unión or into the streets around the plaza.