Founded in 1579 as a cloister for Dominican sisters, Santa Catalina Monastery is a small complex within the city of Arequipa. The monastery consists of three cloisters, a plaza, living quarters, a painting gallery, and a chapel, and is surrounded by a high wall.
Constructed of volcanic stone, the complex is an important example of local viceregal-era architecture. It is also a repository for a significant collection of paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts, providing insight into the life of the community since its founding more than 400 years ago. The complex was opened to the public in 1970 and is an important tourist destination for the city.
High levels of seismic activity in the area and environmental pollution had, by the early 2000s, resulted in failure of part of the roof, cracks and fissures, losses of pieces of sillar to the walls and floors, as well as missing mortar in the joints. Due to an earthquake in 2009, sections of the sillar vault have fallen and lateral displacements have occurred in critical zones.
Following the inclusion of Santa Catalina Monastery on the 2008 Watch, WMF worked together with Promociones Turisticas del Sur S.A. to restore several mural paintings in the church and rehabilitate four historic spaces within the monastery for public use.
Considerable work was carried out in the two rooms adjacent to Ugarte Street that had previously lost their original barrel vaults, resulting in stabilization problems for the walls. The entrance on this street had been bricked up for years.
Before the reconstruction of the barrel vaults, the stone walls had to be stabilized. Each stone was identified with a serial number before being partially removed and rebuilt, with each stone in its original place, to ensure the structural integrity of the rooms. The space between the interior and exterior stone walls was then filled with a mixture of lime, sand, pozzolanic ash, gravel, and river stones—a traditional construction method.
To reconstruct the barrel vaults, the project team built wood trusses as a temporary structural framework that guided the shaping and positioning of the stone voussoir and skylights.
Each arched truss was built according to the measurements taken along the room ceiling. Workers used eucalyptus and wood from the Tornillo, a tree indigenous to the tropics of South America, to create the framework.
Masonry units used as voussoir were cut and shaped according to the vault radii, and positioned on the framework. Stone wedges locked each unit in place.
Mortar was then applied to the barrel vault and left to dry. A month later, the wood trusses were removed.
The entrance at Ugarte Street was reopened, and it now acts as a public access route to the exhibit and event spaces and the interior patio.
Today the restored rooms serve as spaces for exhibits and cultural events, uses that have actively integrated the monastery into the historic center of Arequipa, and the lives of the local community and visitors, while preserving its original religious use.
