Description of the attraction
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima is the seat of the Archbishop and Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani and the headquarters of the administration of the Metropolitanate of Lima. The building is located in Plaza Mayor, the main square of the historic center of Lima, the capital of Peru.
The first building of the Palace of the Archbishop of Lima was built on this site in 1535. This building had a facade with balconies and several entrances, over one of which the archbishop's coat of arms was installed. On the first floor there was a gallery of arches and slender wooden columns. The facade of the old building was demolished at the end of the 19th century, along with part of the cathedral of Lima. The rest of the palace was destroyed in the following years. The current building was opened on December 8, 1924, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.
The building of the Archbishop's Palace of Lima is one of the best examples of the neoclassical style used in the architecture of the capital of Peru in the 20th century. The facade of the palace of the Archbishop in Lima is made entirely of stone. Above the central door, which is neoplatesco style, there are two large neo-baroque balconies carved out of cedar wood.
The halls of the palace house the country's immense cultural wealth: an excellent collection of paintings, sculptures and religious decorations from the colonial period, many of which belonged to temples in the city. Here you can also see a jealously guarded relic - the skull of Saint Toribio Alfonso de Mogroveggio and Robledo (1538-1606) - the second archbishop of Lima, missionary and organizer of the Church in the Viceroyalty of Peru, one of the five Peruvian saints. You can see the sculpture of St. Barbara, stained-glass windows made of French glass, marble stairs with wooden railings, along which you can climb to the second floor to the chapel with a Baroque altar. On the ground floor, there is a permanent exhibition of paintings dedicated to the Virgin Mary, with works of art from the 16th-18th centuries. On the second floor, which preserves the ancient decor of the palace, there is a large collection of portraits of the bishops of Lima, as well as furniture, paintings and decorative pieces from different periods.
