Church of San Francisco el grande

San Francisco el grande, the little that remains of the largest Franciscan convent in the Americas.

Madero St, across from the house of tiles. The convent of San Francisco was the first in Mexico City,  at one point had an extension of 30,000 sq m, a number of churches and cloisters, one of the most famous of these chapels was the one of San Jose de los Naturales which it had the lay out of a mosque and was demolished at the end of the XVIIIc to give way to the church of the Servitas. By 1857 the Church properties expropriation laws passed by the liberals, headed by Benito Juarez, were in force and the first victim was San Francisco, the convent and churches were sold and demolished, these laws not only affected ecclesiastical properties but also Indian lands, turning the Indians from owners to peasants and was one of the causes of the discontent that resulted in the 1910 revolution, not to mention the enormous damage to Mexico´s artistic wealth.

What remains of San Francisco are the Balvanera Chapel, San Francisco Church, the old cloister, ruins of the de Profundis chapel and ruins of San Antonio Chapel.

The Balvanera chapel is what one sees from Madero St, a splendid, although mutilated, estipite façade from the XVIIIc., inside the gilded altar is also from the XVIIIc but not original of the chapel, it has 2 domes decorated with gothic ribs, in Mexico we say that the gothic style died in Europe in the XIVc and came to Mexico to be buried in the XVIc, in this case the burial took place later as the first dome built in Mexico City dates from 1745 (circa).

A splendid archway from the XVIIc  is the entrance to San Francisco church from Balvanera, the nave is very impressive as the dimensions of the church, but little else remains, the main altar, a beautiful gilded wood work is from the 1950´s when the church was returned to the Franciscans, the frieze is original with the emblems of Franciscans and the Holy Sepulcre and the gilded angels on the choir rail.

The cloister is now a Methodist Church (Gante St around the corner from San Francisco), quite well preserved, but only survive  the arches and columns, or at least is the only part that you can visit, it is a great baroque work, the ground floor from mid XVIIc and the upper floor from the XVIIIc, nevertheless the whole gives you the impression of being older, there  is something in the stone work that resembles the ¨plateresco¨ , the frieze is decorated with triglyphs and metopes.

The ruins of the de Profundis chapel are around the corner on 16 de septiembre St, where now stands the bakery Panadería Ideal, quite surrealistic to pass though wedding cakes to fin the noble arches and a small courtyard of the old chapel.

San Antonio y todos Santos Chapel, actually what remains of it, is a block south of panadería Ideal at the corner of eje Central and V. Carranza only the dome was left, the little building now houses a Fondo de Cultura Económica library and the upper floors are or were the office of the Council of Chroniclers of Mexico City.