Mexico 2019 - Santo Domingo

The Church and former monastery of Santo Domingo de Guzmán is a Baroque ecclesiastical building complex in Oaxaca.   

This is part of the restored monastery section, an eyeful in itself. 

In the former monastery is now a museum that houses some important pre-columbian artifacts. 

The church has also been fully restored. Its highly decorated interior includes use of more than 60,000 sheets of 23.5 - karat gold leaf.  The church was founded by the Dominican order and construction began in 1575 taking 200yrs to complete.  

To say "highly decorated" is a bit of an understatement.

 

I kept hearing talking and laughter coming from above.  Angles?  No, the people doing restoration, on their lunch break.

There is also a botanical garden behind the monastery that you can see from the museum.  It looked very intriguing, full of all sorts of cacti and and trees but it seemed strange that there were no people in it.  When I went to check it out, I learned that it wasn't open during the day and to go in to the garden, it would be in late afternoon and you had to sign up in advance for a specific time to get on a tour that would be conducted in French.  Odd.  

 I don't know what this bird is but it was large