San Francisco Church and Convent – The first anti-seismic construction in Chile?

San Francisco Church and Convent in Santiago de Chile

[By Erika Brandner in Santiago, Chile]

The San Francisco Church and Convent is the oldest architectural National Monument in Santiago de Chile. Since the beginning mid 16th Century, it has been a distinctive icon, with its tower and the red walls. After founding Santiago, Pedro de Valdivia was approved by the town council to install a hermitage in honor of the “Virgen del Socorro”, a small figure that had accompanied and protected him and histroops.

San Francisco Church – view from the main street Av. Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins

The hermitage was placed at the southern edge of the “Cañada”, an arm of the Mapocho river and a territory described as a far and dangerous spot. It was administered by the Mercedarians but they had to leave to accompany the army in the conquest of the Araucanía. The Franciscan order took charge with the commitment to build the church and install the Madonna on the mayor altar (where it is up to the present day).

Left: Saint Francis image with the pet pictures that people place there looking for cure and protection of their pets – San Francisco Church main ship with the Madonna Del Socorro Figure in the main altar.

In a seismic country like Chile it wonders that this church has withstood at least 15 earthquakes of magnitude over 7. No other temple has. Why is this? The survival of the church in time is due to many factors:


– The heritage values that the Santiago society has assigned to the building, not allowing the replacement in spite of the many changes that the city have had.


– The configuration of the building: although the constructive systems seems fragile (masonry stone in the central original nave and brick masonry in the aisles) that is to say, systems with low capacity to resist horizontal forces. The structure of the church itself, with its wooden roof has avoided to be flushed out of the plane and improved the seismic performance.

Fast sketch of the current entry and the tower (the tower didn’t resist the 4 Centuries. It is the fourth)

– Labor (it is said that the indians built the former church and that they had the knowledge regarding earthquakes, spaniards had it not)

– The characteristics of the soil, a very important factor as the church is located in an area of sandy gravel from the Mapocho and it belongs to the seismic zone A, where a minor damage caused by earthquakes is expected.

– The TYPE OF FOUNDATIONS found in an excavation study showed that they are far different to that of the other colonial buildings in Santiago:

the foundations begin just 10 cm under the floor level – where the stone wall of 1.7 m thick ends. They are made up of pebble stones brought surely of the Mapocho river. They are submerged in dirt and loose sand; that is, they are not joined by any mortar and, therefore, they are not rigidized. They are also contained laterally by two axes of megalithic stone. This means that the wall is ‘simply supported’ on a sort of mobile support. A kind of SEISMIC ISOLATOR. Today constructors use the same system but instead of stones they use elastomerics. 

San Francisco current entry and convent

The SAN FRANCISCO COLONIAL ART MUSEUM 

The Franciscan Order covered almost the whole southern Cañada (the old second arm of the Mapocho river, that has been dried to build the “Alameda de Las Delicias”or current Avenida Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins. Years of economic constraints forced them to sell and allowed them keep the church and a part of the convent. The other part of the convent was demolished to build the Paris London neighbor.

San Francisco Convent and the Paris London Neighbor

The old convent is today the Museum of Colonial Art. It is said that in the second floor a few monks still leave in the convent. The Museum has a large collection of colonial art, with paintings, textiles, silverware, furniture and sculptures, all of it originated in America during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries under the domain of the Spanish crown. Its walls show 42 peruvian canvases of the 17th century that narrate the life of San Francisco. The other important piece is the Nobel Price Medal of the chilean poet Gabriela Mistral.

Franciscan Cell in the old Convent and Colonial Museum of San Francisco in Santiago de Chile