Basílica y convento de San Francisco de Lima: An ode to bones

           As we walk down the streets of Lima, I am struck by how modern this city appears compared to Cusco.  Buildings are much taller, there are spacious sidewalks for pedestrians, and there is even a small mall we pass through.  Part of our intended path is blocked by fences and security guards due to the presence of foreign Presidents a few blocks down.  To me, this all shows Lima as a modern, important seat of political power.  Yet when we enter the Basilica, I am immediately reminded of the rich history of the city.

            One of the first rooms we visit in this building is the library.  My first impression of the room is the musty smell of old books.  Looking around, I see shelves that are full of ancient texts, which our guide says are fragile to the point of pages crumbling when touched.  There are several windows in the ceiling which were built to let in natural light for reading long before the days of electricity.  After contemplating the hundreds of people who must have studied in here over the years, we move on to the area where worship occurred.  The seats are carved with great detail, including pregnant women to symbolize the virgin Mary and Amazonian women to symbolize the exoticness of Peruvian culture, as seen by the Spaniards.  This mix of decoration shows the interaction of ancient local and colonial cultures.

            Despite the beauty of the church, the real intrigue began as we entered the catacombs below.  In the small, earthy corridors, there were hundreds of bones.  Archaeologists had removed the original stacks and sorted them according to bone type.  Thus, there was a pit of femurs, another for pelvises, and so on with each part of the skeleton.  Interestingly, archaeologists had taken the time to organize these bones into patterns, with long bones forming an arrowlike pattern in the pits, or radiating out from skulls in the center of a well-like formation.  Seeing the hundreds of bones which once belonged to members of the church was a truly humbling experience.  Indeed, I was disappointed to see cases where tourists throwing coins into the pits had damaged some of the bones below.  Another interesting experience in the catacombs was looking up through a grate which led directly into the main part of the church, somewhere we had been minutes earlier.  The close proximity of the dead to the center of worship showed how important this burial site was to the former churchgoers. 

            On the way out of the basilica, the tour guide pointed out another interesting detail.  Above one of the original walls stood a fence which added an additional 10 feet or so of height.  Apparently, monks who work at the church now enjoy an occasional sports match in addition to their religious duties!  Thus, adding a fence around the courtyard protects the building from stray balls.  To me, this alteration showed that while still respecting ancient culture, current occupants of this old building continue to blend our cultures.  This seems like an appropriate representation of Lima as a whole; new and old cultures mixing without one completely overshadowing the other.