Parque Calderón, New Cathedral Blue Domes, Old Cathedral & Plaza de las Flores Guide

Few squares in South America frame four centuries of sacred and civic architecture as dramatically as Parque Abdón Calderón. Laid out in 1557 as the colonial Plaza Mayor and shaded today by eight towering Chilean araucaria pines planted in the 1870s by President Luis Cordero around the bronze statue of teenage independence hero Abdón Calderón, this single square is bookended by two cathedrals and bordered by a Baroque convent flower market.

1. Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepción (The New Cathedral, 1885 to 1975)

• A Century of Brick, Pink Marble & Czechoslovakian Blue Tiles: Occupying the entire western side of Parque Calderón, Cuenca's monumental New Cathedral was designed in 1885 by German Redemptorist friar Juan Bautista Stiehle and built over ninety years by generations of Cuencano masons using locally fired kiln bricks (ladrillo jaboncillo) and pink-and-white Azuay marble. Its iconic skyline is defined by three soaring Renaissance-inspired cupolas clad in sky-blue and white glazed ceramic tiles imported by ship and mule train from Czechoslovakia in the early twentieth century. Look closely at the two truncated front bell towers: engineers halted construction before adding the planned spires after calculating that the foundations could not support the extra weight, giving the facade its distinctive flat-topped profile.
• The Gold-Leaf Baldachin, Stained Glass & Climbing 155 Steps to the Rooftop: Step inside the vast three-nave interior (capable of holding 8,000 worshippers) to admire Belgian and German stained-glass rose windows, Carrara marble floors, and the gilded bronze-and-wood high altar baldachin modelled on Gian Lorenzo Bernini's canopy in St Peter's Basilica in Rome. Before leaving, enter the side staircase on Calle Santa Ana to climb the 155 winding stone steps to the rooftop terrace, where you can walk right alongside the massive blue domes; check the official archdiocesan entrance desk for current daytime rooftop visiting hours.

2. Catedral Vieja (Iglesia del Sagrario, 1557) & Plaza de las Flores

• Catedral Vieja (Museo de Arte Religioso): Directly across the pines on the eastern side of Parque Calderón stands Cuenca's oldest surviving building, begun in 1557 using carved volcanic andesite blocks salvaged from the Inca palaces of Tomebamba. Deconsecrated after the New Cathedral opened and meticulously restored between 1999 and 2005 as a museum of religious art, it preserves 18th-century wall frescoes, a historic 1739 pipe organ with bellows, and a life-size sculpted choir of Christ and the Twelve Apostles.

3. Plaza de las Flores & the Carmelite Turnstile (El Torno)

On the little cobbled square at the corner of Calle Mariscal Sucre and Padre Aguirre sits the open-air Plaza de las Flores, ranked among the world's most atmospheric flower markets. Beneath the 1730 carved stone Baroque portal of the Monasterio del Carmen de la Asunción, step inside the vestibule to purchase herbal tonics, rosewater (agua de pitimas), and beeswax creams directly from the cloistered nuns through a revolving wooden turnstile.