Project

The 40 surviving chapels in the Oyón Valley were built in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as part of a Spanish program to convert Peru’s indigenous population to Christianity. Built of adobe, the chapels represent a rich vernacular architecture and many contain vivid mural paintings, ornate polychrome altarpieces, and coffered wood ceilings. (...)

The 40 surviving chapels in the Oyón Valley were built in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as part of a Spanish program to convert Peru’s indigenous population to Christianity. Built of adobe, the chapels represent a rich vernacular architecture and many contain vivid mural paintings, ornate polychrome altarpieces, and coffered wood ceilings. It is believed that each structure originally had a freestanding bell tower and a large, open-air porch, though many of these are now gone.

Although much of the original building fabric of the chapels has survived over the centuries, period earthquakes have damaged and weakened many of the structures. Seismic cracks allow for water ingress, producing excessive moisture, which in turn contributes to the deterioration painted surfaces such as walls and altarpieces. Aggravated with neglect and unsympathetic repairs using modern building materials like concrete rather than adobe, these fine examples of rural religious architecture are fading from the cultural landscape, having never been studied from a historical or artistic point of view.