Museum of El Carmen

The Museum of El Carmen displays thick stone walls and a striking set of blue and white tiled domes that shine above the neighborhood. This building began as a Carmelite monastery in the early seventeenth century, designed for monks seeking silence and isolation. When the government seized the property in the mid-nineteenth century, they discovered the bodies of benefactors and friars preserved in the crypts. Those mummified figures remain here today, resting in the cool, subterranean chambers where they were originally laid to rest.