Museo & Convento de Santa Teresa

Lonely Planet review

The fascinating Santa Teresa Convent was founded in 1685 and is still home to a small community of Carmelite nuns. One of them is an architect, and has directed a superb restoration project that has converted part of the sizeable building into a museum. The excellent guided tour (Spanish & English) explains how girls of fifteen from wealthy families entered the convent, getting their last glimpse of parents and loved ones at the door.

Entry was a privilege, paid for with a sizeable dowry; a good portion of these offerings are on display in the form of religious artwork.

There are numerous fine pieces, including a superb Madonna by Castilian sculptor Alonso Cano, and several canvases by Melchor Pérez de Holguín, Bolivia's most famous painter. There's a room of fine painted wooden Christs (and a cracking Crucifixion by Ignacio del Río, a painter heavily influenced by Zurbarán and Velásquez). Some of the artworks verge on the macabre, as does the skull sitting in a bowl of dust in the middle of the dining room, and a display of wire whisks that some of the nuns used for self-flagellation.

As impressive as the works of art on show is the building, with two pretty cloisters housing numerous cacti and a venerable apple tree, and the glimpse into a cloistered world that only really changed character in the 1960s, with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

The guided tour lasts about two hours, and some of the rooms are particularly chilly. There's also a café and shop, where you can buy quesitos (fried cheese and honey cakes) made by the nuns.