Convento de San Francisco

Catamarca & La Rioja


The order of St Francis was on the scene very early and began building here in the late 16th century. Bad luck with construction and then an earthquake means the current church is only an early-20th-century neo-Gothic affair. It houses the image of the Niño Jesús Alcalde, a Christ-child icon symbolically recognized as the city’s mayor, dressed in robes of office.