The Santo Domingo Church (Spanish: ''Iglesia de Santo Domingo'') is a
Dominican church in the historical downtown of
Santiago de Chile
Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile (), is the capital city, capital and largest city of Chile and one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is located in the country's Chilean Central Valley, central valley and is the center ...
. It is located at the corner of Santo Domingo Street and 21 de Mayo Street.
History
The present structure is the fourth church built on the same site to house the Dominican congregation in Santiago. Earthquakes in 1595,
1647, and
1730 destroyed the early churches.
The fourth church began to be constructed in 1747 under the design of architect Juan de los Santos Vasconcellos.
Joaquín Toesca worked on its construction between 1795 and 1796.
The church has suffered two important fires.
The first occurred in 1895
and the second fire occurred in 1963, which destroyed the interior of the church.
Architecture
The main body of the church is built in
ashlar
Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones.
Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...
masonry. The
bell towers are constructed of clay brick masonry covered with stucco. The front facade features
pilasters
In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...
and statues set in
niches.
The
attic
An attic (sometimes referred to as a '' loft'') is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building. It is also known as a ''sky parlor'' or a garret. Because they fill the space between the ceiling of a building's t ...
is surmounted by three statues.
See also
*
Roman Catholicism in Chile
References
{{Commons Category, Iglesia de Santo Domingo, Santiago de Chile
Churches in Santiago, Chile
Roman Catholic churches in Chile