Monasterio de Santa Catalina, Arequipa · Travel Poster

Each poster comes with a letter home. Ella writes about the place and its hidden history, and the details that never makes it into the guidebooks.

For 390 years, the Monasterio de Santa Catalina was a city within a city that most of Arequipa never saw. Founded in 1579, the walled complex housed over 300 women behind four metre walls, with its own streets named after Spanish cities, its own squares, ovens, cisterns and cemetery, a self-contained world of white arches and terracotta courtyards hidden from public view. It wasn't until the 1970s that the convent finally opened its gates, revealing an entire colonial townscape that had simply been kept secret for centuries.

This poster is an original illustration in watercolour and ink, painted exclusively for the Ella's Adventures travel poster series.

No frame included.