Ruins of La Recolección

OVERVIEW

The church and convent of the Recollect Franciscans on the west edge of Antigua Guatemala, begun in 1701 and dedicated in 1717 with what was then one of the largest naves in the kingdom. The Santa Marta earthquakes of 1773 threw down the vaults; the ruin was never rebuilt and is preserved as part of the UNESCO World Heritage city, its collapsed arches lying where they fell.

HISTORY

The 1717 earthquake had already damaged it once. After 1773 the capital was moved to the present Guatemala City and Antigua's religious houses were abandoned; the Recolección's stone was quarried for other buildings before the site was protected.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The barrio's tradition, recorded in Guatemalan guides, is of the footsteps of chained penitents crossing the ruin at midnight — the sound of the friars' processions of self-mortification, continued after the walls came down. Antigua's better-known legends (La Llorona on the Calle del Arco, El Sombrerón, La Tatuana) belong to the city as a whole and to Asturias's Leyendas de Guatemala (1930); this entry records only the one tied to the site.

VISITING

Open to visitors with the other Antigua ruins; a ticketed site. The fallen masonry is unstable in places.