Bolívar's Caracas: The Libertador's Sacred Sites

File:Patio central - casa de Bolívar | 🔗 wikimedia.org

Photo: Jesús Rincón / Wikimedia Commons, Public domainWikimedia Commons

This is the house where Simón Bolívar was born on July 24, 1783. What you're looking at is a seventeenth-century colonial building—completed in the 1640s—though it's been substantially restored. Between 1916 and 1918, it was reconstructed and reopened as a museum in 1921, so what you see is a careful recreation of the …

Iglesia Católica San Francisco We're looking at one of Caracas's oldest churches, built starting in 1665 right next to what was the Franciscan convent. You can see the neo-baroque facade from the street here—three arched doorways with decorative moldings and pilasters that give it that colonial grandeur, though it's be…

We're looking at the Academia Nacional de la Historia, founded back in 1888—that's over 130 years of archiving Venezuelan history in one place. The building itself is a classic Caracas structure, modest but dignified, the kind of institutional architecture you see throughout the old city center. What's happening inside…

This church sits in the El Paraíso neighborhood, on Calle Los Liberales just diagonal to Plaza Madariaga. It's been serving the community for over forty years now—the largest Seventh-day Adventist congregation in Venezuela, with around 543 members. You'll notice it's a working church, not a museum piece. Services run o…