We used them to cut nougat
Nuns previously stood night watch to protect the convent from theft; now modern security systems and professional restoration have safeguarded 1,500 pieces of colonial art. Cataloging revealed unexpected treasures including Inca ceremonial knives used for centuries in the kitchen, demonstrating how functional use preserved priceless artifacts.
- 1,500 colonial artworks cataloged—more than double the initial estimate of 700 pieces
- Fifteen Carmelite sisters previously stood night watch twice monthly to prevent theft
- $255,000 preservation grant from U.S. Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation
- First three Spanish sisters arrived from Lima in 1683; convent founded by priest Francisco de la Masa y Quijano
- Inca ceremonial knives discovered in kitchen storage, used for centuries to portion nougat
Peru's Santa Teresa Convent in Ayacucho opens to the public for the first time in three centuries, revealing 1,500 colonial-era artworks after a US$255,000 preservation project doubled initial cataloging expectations.
For three centuries, the nuns of Santa Teresa Convent in Ayacucho kept watch through the night. Twice a month, each of the fifteen Carmelite sisters would climb to the choir loft, lie down on a rough wooden cot, and listen for the sound of thieves. Weeks before one such vigil, armed robbers had cut through a side door with a saw, only to flee when a sister's whistle pierced the darkness. The memory of two stolen silver candelabras still stung. These were the nights that defined their lives as guardians of something they did not fully understand they possessed.
In September 2023, the American ambassador Lisa Kenna arrived at the convent with a delegation from Peru's Ministry of Culture and the National University of Engineering and Technology. She brought news and money: $255,000 from the Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation. The mission was straightforward—catalog and properly house the colonial paintings, textiles, sculptures, and religious art that filled the convent's deteriorating storage rooms. Initial estimates suggested around 700 objects worthy of museum care. The convent itself had been declared a national historical monument in 1972, but its treasures remained largely unseen and unprotected, locked behind doors the sisters opened reluctantly to outsiders.
Two years later, the project was complete. The numbers had doubled. Technicians from the university had cataloged 1,500 pieces—more than twice what anyone expected. The sisters, it turned out, had not shown the specialists everything at first. Some objects they did not recognize as valuable. Others were so woven into daily life that no one thought to call them art. In a cardboard box in the kitchen storage, someone had scrawled in thick black marker: "baking things." Inside lay oxidized cookie molds, chipped bowls, measuring spoons—and among them, a group of ceremonial Inca knives, some fashioned from silver, others from copper. When asked about them, the sisters answered with confusion. "We used them to cut nougat," they said. For generations, these pre-Columbian ceremonial objects had been employed to portion out sweets for the convent's kitchen, preserved not by reverence but by use.
José Andrés de Leo Martínez, the architect leading the project, understood the sisters' initial wariness. To enter a Carmelite order is to inherit a three-hundred-year-old house and everything in it. The responsibility of care falls on women whose primary calling is prayer and spiritual devotion, not curatorial work. As the project progressed and the sisters saw the respect being paid to their collection, they opened locked rooms and brought out objects they had stored away, things they had never considered patrimony. The university team had to adapt. Budgets were stretched. Staff was expanded. The embassy agreed to reallocate resources. What mattered most, De Leo insisted, was safeguarding the heritage with dignity—understanding each piece's nature and history, creating secure storage with proper environmental conditions, presenting everything to visitors with appropriate lighting and curatorial care.
The collection that emerged tells the story of a community connected to the wider world. The exhibition, titled "An Open Cloister to the World Through Art," showcases paintings from Italian workshops on copper, alabaster, and cloth, likely brought by the first three Spanish sisters who arrived from Lima in 1683. There are European furnishings, textiles from the Philippines, Spain, Italy, and France. The library holds books from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries—theological treatises, lives of saints, volumes about Santa Teresa, the order's patroness. Some still bear the seal of the Jesuit library; the order had supported the convent before their expulsion. Readers left traces of themselves in margins and annotations, evidence of how these cloistered women engaged with ideas.
The convent's founding story, recovered through research, centers on Francisco de la Masa y Quijano, a priest whose parents—wealthy Spanish landowners—died before the first stone was laid. Their creole sons inherited the mission. It was Francisco who secured the permits, placed the foundation stone, and brought the first sisters from Lima to Huamanga. He did not live to see the work completed. The convent bears the name of San Francisco de Borja, though it was never a Jesuit institution; the saint's presence memorializes this priest's role in its creation.
Today, the sisters no longer stand watch in the dark. Where the rough cot once sat in the choir loft, there is now an exhibition space. Modern security systems—sensors, cameras, reinforced doors and windows—protect what the nuns once guarded with their own vigilance. They can sleep without fear. The knives that cut nougat for centuries now sit in a display case, their dual nature—ceremonial object and kitchen tool—telling a story about how things survive not always through reverence but through the simple fact of being used, being needed, being part of a life lived within these walls. After three hundred years, the convent has opened to the world, and the world is finally seeing what was always there.
Citações Notáveis
With this perspective, it's logical that there was initial distrust, a caution about showing everything to a newcomer.— José Andrés de Leo Martínez, architect and researcher leading the cataloging project
Those knives were used by generations of religious women to lift nougat from trays. And that's why they survived. If they hadn't been used in the kitchen, perhaps they would have ended up in the trash out of ignorance.— José Andrés de Leo Martínez, on how functional use preserved pre-Columbian artifacts
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why did it take three centuries for this convent to open its doors?
The sisters weren't hiding anything deliberately. They were protecting something they didn't fully understand they had. A cloister is meant to be separate from the world—that's the whole point. Opening it up meant trusting strangers with their most intimate space.
But they were standing night watch. That suggests they knew the collection was valuable.
They knew it was precious to them, yes. But there's a difference between knowing something matters and knowing it matters to history, to art, to scholarship. A painting on the wall is beautiful. A ceremonial knife is useful for cutting nougat. You don't necessarily see yourself as a museum curator.
The knives are remarkable—Inca ceremonial objects used for centuries in the kitchen. How does something like that survive?
By being loved into survival, in a way. If those knives had been locked away as precious artifacts, they might have been lost or destroyed through neglect. Instead, they were handled, used, integrated into the daily rhythm of the convent. That use kept them alive.
And the cataloging team found 1,500 pieces instead of 700. What does that tell us?
It tells us that the sisters were still discovering their own inheritance. Some rooms they hadn't opened in decades. Some objects they'd never considered worth mentioning. The team had to rebuild their entire approach, stretch their budget, expand their staff. It was humbling work.
The exhibition is called "An Open Cloister to the World Through Art." That's a paradox, isn't it?
Not really. Cloisters aren't sealed off from the world—they're connected through art, through books, through the circulation of ideas and objects. These sisters had Italian paintings, Filipino textiles, French furniture. They read theology and philosophy. They were part of something vast, even if they never left these walls.
What happens to the sisters now?
They sleep. They pray. They no longer need to stand watch in the dark. The convent is finally doing what it was built to do—holding something precious and letting people see it.