The Iglesia Nuestra Señora de Las Mercedes is a

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * C ...

located in

Papudo Papudo is a Chilean commune located in the Petorca Province, Valparaíso Region. Most of its permanent residents live in the small town of the same name, whereas primarily new development for the affluent population of Santiago concentrates in ...

Valparaíso Region The Valparaíso Region ( es, Región de Valparaíso, links=no, ) is one of Chile's 16 first order administrative divisions.Valparaíso Region, 2006 With the country's second-highest population of 1,790,219 , and fourth-smallest area of , ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

. It was declared as a National Historic Monument in 1995.

History

Papudo was initially used as a port and began its development as a resort beach after the opening of a railroad to the town in the early 20th century. Since the mid-20th century, Papudo is exclusively a tourist destination. The church was inaugurated on March 9, 1918. Its architect was Alberto Cruz Montt, who also designed the building housing the Central Bank of Chile and the Club de la Unión. A church annex was demolished in the 2000s to build an apartment building. The church was used as a location for the telenovela

Sucupira Sucupira may refer to: * Sucupira, Tocantins, a municipality in the state of Tocantins, Brazil * Sucupira (TV series) ''Sucupira'' is a Chilean telenovela produced and broadcast by Televisión Nacional de Chile from March 11 to August 9, 1996, ...

Description

The church, which faces the beach of Papudo, has a

Latin Cross A Latin cross or ''crux immissa'' is a type of cross in which the vertical beam sticks above the crossbeam, with the three upper arms either equally long or with the vertical topmost arm shorter than the two horizontal arms, and always with a mu ...

plan with single

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

, and is built in the

Spanish Colonial Revival style The Spanish Colonial Revival Style ( es, Arquitectura neocolonial española) is an architectural stylistic movement arising in the early 20th century based on the Spanish Colonial architecture of the Spanish colonization of the Americas. In the ...

with

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

details on its front facade. The walls of the

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building withi ...

and the nave are reinforced by

buttresses A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral (si ...

, which are separated by windows that are protected by

wrought-iron Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a wood-like "grain" t ...

grilles. The

wood shingle Wood shingles are thin, tapered pieces of wood primarily used to cover roof shingle, roofs and walls of buildings to protect them from the weather. Historically roof shingle, shingles, also known as shakes, were split from straight grained, kno ...

roof features exposed rafter tails. The church features a wood trusses ceiling and a bell-gable. Church furniture includes wood carved confessionals and wrought-iron lanterns.

References

{{coord, -32.50648, -71.44950, format=dms, type:landmark_region:CL, display=title 1919 in Chile Religious buildings and structures completed in 1919 20th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Chile Baroque Revival architecture in Chile