Birth home of St. Martin de Porres

A plain, whitewashed doorway on the Calle de Santo Domingo marks the house where Martin de Porres was born in fifteen seventy-nine. The son of a Spanish nobleman and a freed woman from Panama, Martin grew up here in relative poverty before joining the Dominican Order as a lay brother. He spent his life tending to the city’s sick and poor, often sneaking food and medicine out of the friary to feed them. The building remains a humble, quiet presence among the surrounding stone.