CONJUNTO MONUMENTAL BELÉN

The 18th century complex is made up of the Church of Belén and the old men's and women's hospitals. The church is singular, its façade is worked in the form of an altarpiece composed of three sections. Its ceilings, painted with polychrome figures, show particularly curious cherubs. In the highest part, on an undulating cornice, are three sculptures representing the three theological virtues: faith, in the centre, blindfolded and holding a chalice; hope, on the left, symbolised by the anchor; and finally charity, on the right, with a child in her arms.

The men's hospital, built in the 18th century, with thick stone walls and a vaulted ceiling, is surrounded by small niches in which the patients waited to receive extreme unction. A reconstruction of the position of the patients shows them facing the altar to follow the celebration of the mass. Today, the hospital houses a museum of medicine. In the rooms to the right of the entrance is an art gallery dedicated to the painter Andrés Zevallos.

Finally, we enter the women's hospital, on the other side of the street, through a heavy door of carved stone in the mestizo style, whose lintel supported by two four-breasted caryatids is a sign of fecundity. Inside, the Museo Etnologico displays objects representative of pre-Incan cultures, such as these three children's mummies. The walls still show traces of the polychrome paint that once covered them.