Monasterio de los Dolores de María Santísima de Guatemala

Abstract

The convent of Our Lady of Sorrows was founded thanks to the alms of locals and the generous donation of María Ventura Arrivillaga and Coronado. The royal decree that authorized its establishment was granted in 1693 and completed in 1700. After that, the nunnery and its inhabitants withstood several earthquakes, financial difficulties, and other setbacks. In 1773 the Santa Marta earthquakes destroyed the city and the convent. The capital was moved from the Panchoy Valley to a new location, the new city of Guatemala in the Ermita Valley, where a new convent was built for the nuns, until secularizing nineteenth-century liberal governments expulsed them .