This religious center, built in the seventeenth century, was the first monastery founded by the Augustinian Recollects in America by Fray Mateo Delgado initiative with the aim of creating a community dedicated to prayer and reflection. In the beginning, some hermits who lived in nearby caves were invited to join.  Currently the monastery is destined to the novitiate of the Augustinian Fathers and to spiritual retreats. It is located 45 minutes from Villa de Leyva in a region known as La Candelaria Desert or “Desert of Souls “, in the surroundings of Raquira village.

The convent conserves in its interior an important collection of colonial art, gardens, corridors with semicircular arches supported by stone columns and brick floors. From the plaza, also known as compass, you can see the garden, the cemetery, the temple, a small museum of antiques and oil paintings and its church, where you can see a gallery of portraits and paintings made by different painters and artists of the colonial era, highlighting six paintings by the BOGOTÁ painter Gregorio Vásquez de Arce and Cevallos.

DURATION: 1 hour