Inquisition Tribunal

In front of you is one of Lima's most unsettling buildings. Behind its classical temple front sat the Tribunal of the Holy Office, the Inquisition, whose jurisdiction covered much of South America.

1A court for half a continent

Philip II ordered the Lima tribunal to be created in 1569, and it began work in 1570 under Viceroy Francisco de Toledo. It pursued offences against the faith: crypto-Jews, Protestants, bigamists, blasphemers, healers accused of witchcraft. Indigenous people, however, fell outside its jurisdiction.

On 15 November 1573 the first auto-da-fé was held in the Plaza Mayor. The Frenchman Mateo Salado, accused of Lutheranism, was the first person condemned to the stake. Many of those tried as “Lutherans” were in fact corsairs captured along the viceroyalty's coasts.

2Disputed figures

How many died? Historians don't agree, because they count different things. Estimates of those executed over two and a half centuries range from about thirty to around fifty. Most of the accused ended up “reconciled”, sentenced to prison, exile, flogging or the humiliating sanbenito, a penitential tunic.

After independence, the building housed Peru's first Constituent Congress and later the Senate. Since 1968 it has been the Museum of Congress and the Inquisition.

Inside you can still see the audience hall with its Mudéjar ceiling and the so-called secret door, through which informers testified unseen. The tribunal was finally abolished in 1820.

3What to look for

• The columned portico, a neoclassical front added after the tribunal's time.
• Plaza Bolívar, once called Inquisition Square.
• The Congress next door: power changed hands, the neighbourhood didn't.