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Ninety seconds on Catedral de Trujillo
Paintings cover the vault and dome of Trujillo's cathedral, and its museum keeps colonial gold and silver for the liturgy above an underground burial vault with painted walls.
The front is ochre yellow, trimmed with white pilasters, between twin bell towers with golden domes. The dome and one bell tower you see were restored after the 1970 earthquake brought them down.
Inside, the side altarpieces are Rococo, painted white and picked out in gold, and one Baroque altarpiece carries the same colours. The canvases belong to the Cusco and Quito schools of painting, and the paintings on the vault follow the Cusco style.
The Museo Catedralicio holds colonial paintings and carved saints alongside its liturgical pieces. Among the sculptures, look for a Saint John the Baptist and a Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
The underground vault below served as the burial place for members of the Sagrario brotherhood. Its walls carry 18th-century murals of the altar, the Apostles and the Evangelists.
Start with the free-standing high altarpiece, at the far end of the nave. Go in and make your way up to it, then come back past the side altarpieces.
On the way back, look up at the paintings on the vault and the dome, and pick out the one Baroque altarpiece among the Rococo ones.
Then move on to the Museo Catedralicio. Its first room holds the reliquary used at a Mass said by Pope John Paul the Second, and the gold and silver, the sculptures and the paintings follow.
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