Vaulted Passage, San Francisco el Grande Convent, Antigua

The San Francisco el Grande complex in Antigua Guatemala dates to 1579, when Franciscan friars established the church and convent on this site. Earthquakes in 1717, 1751, and 1773 repeatedly damaged the structure, and the 1773 Santa Marta earthquake left much of the convent in ruin, prompting the colonial capital's move to present-day Guatemala City. Hermano Pedro de Betancourt, canonized in 2002 as Guatemala's first saint, founded a hospital order here and is buried within the church that was later rebuilt beside the ruins. The vaulted stone corridors and roofless chambers that survive are what remain of the original convent's service passages and storage rooms, left largely as the earthquakes and subsequent decades left them.

Photo taken in February 2020.