Santa Catalina Monastery

Santa Catalina Monastery tickets: which one to buy

The entrance fee is moderate by Peruvian standards and covers the whole walled complex; there is no cheaper partial ticket. Guides wait inside the gate and charge a fixed hourly rate that two or three visitors can share, which is the best value here because the streets inside are a maze and nothing is explained on the walls. Audio guides are also available. Night visits on two evenings a week, when the lanes are lit by candles and oil lamps, cost a little more and are the version to take if your schedule allows.

Arequipa city tours almost always include Santa Catalina and cost several times the entry; a walking tour with the monastery is the standard half day. Booking ahead is unnecessary except for the night opening. Allow more time than you think, because most visitors underestimate the size and end up hurrying the last third. The entrance is on Calle Santa Catalina, a block north of the Plaza de Armas, and the queue is rarely long except when a cruise group arrives from Matarani.

Visiting Santa Catalina Monastery: what to see

The monastery was founded in 1579 and functioned for nearly four centuries as a closed city for the daughters of wealthy Arequipa families, who entered with dowries, servants and furniture and never left. It covers 20,000 square metres behind four-metre walls in the middle of the modern city, laid out as streets with names, small squares, a laundry of stone jars fed by a channel, kitchens black with soot and individual cells that are really small apartments. The walls are painted in deep cobalt blue and a strong brick red, the colours that make every photograph of the place recognisable, and they are built of sillar, the white and pink volcanic tuff quarried from the mountains that stand over Arequipa.

Earthquakes flattened the first buildings in 1600 and 1604, and the present layout dates from the last third of the seventeenth century. A reforming prioress sent from Rome in 1871 ended the servants and the private wealth; a small community of nuns still lives in a section closed to visitors. An art gallery in the former chapter house holds colonial paintings of the Cusco school, and the tower of the church gives the one view that takes in the whole complex with the volcano Misti behind it.

Santa Catalina Monastery opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from mid-morning to early evening, with two late openings a week that run into the night; those are the ones to aim for. Arequipa sits at 2,335 metres, so the sun is fierce and the shade is cold, and the monastery's lanes alternate between the two all day. The dry season from April to November brings the reliable blue skies that the painted walls need. Coach groups arrive late morning.

Allow two hours at a minimum and three to see it properly; there is a cafe inside near the far cloister. Photography is allowed and tripods are not. Dress is informal, though this remains a religious house. The city's cathedral and the Jesuit church of La Compania are within a few minutes' walk on the Plaza de Armas. Late afternoon is the best light on the blue and red walls, and the monastery stays open long enough after that for the lanes to empty.