The chapel of San Pedro de Mórrope was constructed in the 16th century during the Colonial period in Peru in an effort to convert the indigenous Mochica people to Christianity. The chapel is a rare surviving example of rural, colonial Andean architecture in the region. (...)
The chapel of San Pedro de Mórrope was constructed in the 16th century during the Colonial period in Peru in an effort to convert the indigenous Mochica people to Christianity. The chapel is a rare surviving example of rural, colonial Andean architecture in the region. The building was constructed using pre-Hispanic methods and traditional materials, including adobe, plaster-coated carob tree trunks, reeds, and quincha, a mud-covered wood cane. The chapel has a rectangular plan with a single nave, and contains a small, open-air apsidal chapel behind the main altar wall. The main altar is in the form of a stepped pyramid, similar to the 1,700-year-old Moche burial mound in Sipán, a few kilometers to the west. The chapel is part of a larger 17th-century complex of a church and convent. Due to the chapel’s remote coastal location, it is continuously subjected to extreme weather conditions including high humidity, which had resulted in biological growth and insect infestation, damaging the structure. Torrential rains damaged the roof, eroded the exterior plaster coating on the building, and weakened the adobe walls through rising damp. Many of the architectural features, including the arches at the nave, have been lost.
