Sucre: Dream Capital

The White City – as it is known in Bolivia - was founded in 1538 as La Plata (The Silver); the city was the capital of the Charcas, an extensive territory stretching from the Rio de la Plata to Peru. In 1776, the Spaniards created new administrative divisions and the city name was changed to Chuquisaca. On 6 of August 1825 the Bolivian independence was declared here and its name was changed again to Sucre, honouring in such a way a general involved in the independence process. Its wide sidewalks and pleasantly empty streets allow a full appreciation of its colonial white houses with beautiful wood balconies.

Catedral Metropolitana de Sucre: The cathedral was constructed between 1559 and 1712, and it occupies one of the corners of the Plaza 25 de Mayo, the central plaza in Sucre. The art collection in its museum was organized from artworks that belonged to Archbishop Arrien and is one of the best collections in Bolivia of Sacred Art.

Basilica de San Francisco: Few buildings define Sucre’s centre better than the San Francisco Basilica, it includes a wonderful bridge of arches over the adjacent street which gives the area its special look. In the past it included the adjacent Mercado Central and a monastery across the Arce Street.

Central Market: In a city that likes to sleep until the late morning, the Mercado Central is a good place to eat breakfast while taking a close look at the local culture and food. Sucre’s market enjoys the city’s vicinity to high valleys and tropical areas; the fruits variety is stunning.

Plaza 25 de Mayo: The most distinctive feature of Spaniard colonial towns is the central plaza, which serves them as administrative and cultural centres. In Sucre’s plaza was declared the Bolivian independence and several monuments related to the event can be appreciated.

Quick Tips:

Sucre is beautiful but very small, thus the best is to combine a visit with nearby attractions; a day in the town is more than enough. Potosi is just two hours away by car or three hours away by bus and offers many attractions including the silver mines of colonial times.

The colonial center of Sucre is apparently void of inhabitants; most houses have been transformed into hotels, internet kiosks or restaurants. Thus, booking places in advance is not necessary.

I warmly recommend the Cafe Penco Penquitos, at Estudiantes 60, in front of the university and a block away from the central plaza. They try so hard to serve real Brazilian coffee that they even brought a waitress from there; her charming Spanish is fully worth the visit. The pleasant interior includes a fountain decorated with sculpted giant mushrooms that successfully filters out the street noises.

Two times during the mornings and once in the early afternoon a truck leaves from the cathedral to a nearby paleontological park. The trip costs .25 and takes a couple of hours.

Sucre’s climate is halfway between cold La Paz and steaming Santa Cruz. It reminds of mild Cochabamba. Light clothes for the day and something warm fro the chilly evenings are the best. The city is too close to the Andean Plateau for mosquitoes or other insects to be a problem.

Best Way To Get Around:

Sucre is a destination of its own in Bolivia; it is not in the way to any other place. Hence it is worth consideration only as part of a relatively long trip to the southern part of the country.

Once the decision is taken, it is possible to reach the city with bus and airplane. Planes from La Paz leave every day; the flight takes a bit more than forty minutes. Buses are a bit more complicated; since Sucre is on the route between Potosi and Cochabamba, the best is to reach it with buses departing from one of those cities. Direct buses from La Paz travel to Sucre through Potosi and the harsh trip takes twelve hours.

Buses are sporadically stopped and searched for illegal substances by the local police; holding your documents handy at all times is essential.

Within Sucre there is an elaborated network of minibuses, but they are too crowded to be pleasant. The city is small enough to cover by foot – especially the downtown – and taxis charge as little as a quarter for short trips.

The most distinctive feature of Spaniard colonial towns is the central plaza, which serves them as an administrative and cultural centre. Standing at the plaza’s centre, a glance is enough to identify the importance of the town and if there is something special in it. Even without knowing Bolivian history, it is easy to see that Sucre’s plaza is unique, that something special happened here. Despite the town’s tiny size, its main plaza is huge. The cathedral by its side is monumental. The administrative centres – belonging to the town and the province – have national proportions. Moreover, by the end of this quick glance, the eyes stop at a humbler building that does not fit into the list of regular structures in such a plaza.

The odd structure is the Casa de la Libertad, the Liberty House, where the Bolivian independence was declared almost two centuries ago. The house was built in 1621 as part of a Jesuitical Monastery and in 1624 was dedicated to the Universidad Mayor, Real y Pontificia de San Francisco Xavier de Chuquisaca. There, the assembly that declared the independence met. Nowadays it is a museum.

To understand the incongruence, it is essential to realize that Sucre is a bit off-side in the Bolivian map. The main routes connecting La Paz – the most important city in Bolivia and where the government is – with Argentina do not cross Sucre, thus the official capital of Bolivia is a semi-forgotten town in the hills. A century ago the Bolivian government moved to La Paz and left Sucre to live alone with its memories.

The most distinctive building by the plaza is the cathedral, the Catedral Metropolitana, which was founded in 1559. The beautiful structure includes a museum with one of the best collections of sacred art in Bolivia.

Next to it is the Prefectura, the administrative centre of the "Departamento," which is the Bolivian name for their provinces. The structure includes interesting casts representing the different Bolivian provinces and in that reinforces the feeling of being at a location of national importance. Continuing the walk around the plaza, the Casa de la Libertad is reached and a bit afterwards the municipality building. The last is worth visiting for a beautiful vitrage in its interior depicting an indigenous woman posing as Justice.

The next side of the plaza includes commercial structures, and the last one hosts the ASE – Asociacion Sucrense de Ecologia – where embalmed animals from the different Bolivian habitats are showed, from condors lacking a few feathers to strange mammals. Next to it is the Museo Universitario Dr Alfredo Gutierrez Valenzuela.

At the plaza’s centre there is a statue honouring the Mariscal de Ayacuchoo and celebrating the centenary of the 25th of May 1809 insurrection, which preceded (and prepared) the declaration of Bolivian independence by sixteen years.

Local markets are always a good place to meet the local culture and people. While traveling, they provide a fascinating opportunity to examine differences among cities. For example, moving south through the Andean Plateau from La Paz down to Oruro, Sucre and Potosi would result in finding substantially smaller breads in the markets. Anyone there – even those few without a PhD from the London School of Economics – would explain the nosy visitor that this is a result of moving into poorer areas of Bolivia.

However, there are other reasons to visit markets. In such a busy capital as Sucre, people don’t really get up before 9AM and coffee shops do not open before 10AM. Thus, the Central Market is a handy place for a breakfast. To make things friendlier, the market is centrally located next to the San Francisco Basilica and thus the breakfast can be combined with a visit to that magnificent church. Actually, in the sixteenth century the market was part of the basilica. The town’s central plaza is also nearby.

Bolivian markets can pose a serious threat to health, but along time I have found that the basic breakfast offered in them – bread, cheese and coffee – is constantly reliable and safe. In Sucre, the bread takes the shape of tiny buns. The round ones are called "sarnas" and usually – in the rest of the country - have a bit of cheese incrusted on their top; here the last is very symbolic, more an atavism than anything else. The set breakfast costs a quarter and includes two buns, a triangular piece of cheese and a sweet coffee. The only cheese available in the Bolivian markets is white, solid, and extra-salty, fact that balances off the coffee over-sweetness. The coffee is what the denizens call "destilado." It is prepared out of a concentrate diluted to fill up a cup; unless warned in advance, the shopkeeper would automatically add two big, overloaded spoons of sugar to it. A children’s (and dentists) Heaven.

Another option for breakfast is to have a healthy fruits juice. Sitting on the broken hills between the Andean Plateau and the Amazonian Basin, Sucre has access to a wide variety of fruits. Papayas, peaches, apples and pomegranates are obvious, but more exotic options exist. Chirimoya (custard apple), tumbo (a fruit resembling huge, solid dates but with a green skin and orange interior), pakai (a long green fruit filled up with sweet, fibrous, white units), tuna (a cactus fruit appearing in green, yellow or red) and maracuya (looks like a soft cousin of the pomegranate) are interesting options for an unusual meal. They can be prepared with water or milk.

Few buildings define Sucre’s centre better than the San Francisco Basilica. Not being neither on the central plaza nor the only colonial church in town, that is a somewhat strange statement. However, the structure includes a wonderful bridge of arches over the adjacent street, which gives the place – and the whole town - its special look. For once the colonial architects got it right and instead of constructing more of the same decided to give a special character to the town.

Sometimes the need of so many churches in those tiny colonial settlements looks unclear to the uninitiated. A cathedral is always by the central plaza, a basilica is a few blocks away and many churches are between and around them. Understanding the local reality is essential for the removal of the redundancy feeling. The cathedral was the main temple in town and administered the activities of all the other churches. The small churches scattered around provided services to the different neighbourhoods and congregations. The basilica began its way as a Franciscan Missionary centre aimed to convert the natives; task in which it was exceedingly successful from the beginning.

The basilica’s construction began in 1581, on the site of an earlier Franciscan missionary school, and ended in 1618. Its location is fabulous, near the central plaza but not on it; it spans the Arce Avenue with a beautiful series of white arches, which in the past connected the church with the now inexistent monastery. Sucre’s Central Market – see the dedicated entry - is next to it and in the 16th century was actually part of the church. The structure includes nowadays one central nave and two chapels on its sides, and on the Arce Avenue’s side there are fourteen crosses - in remembrance of the Via Crucis - where a second nave was in the far past. On the wall next to the main door there are printed tiles with exhaustive details of the place history.

The temple has a notable roof made of mud on its outer side and a magnificent Mudejar craftsmanship on cedar wood in the interior. The main altar was goldened with fire, in a technique peculiar to the Spaniards of those days; nearby there are four side altars that have been reconstructed – the originals are lost. Carved and goldened seats have been given to other churches; apparently only three chairs of the original collection are still in place. Strangely enough, under the main structure there is a crypt where some Spaniard conquerors are buried. There are two very solid and square bell towers, which Bolivians revere as being those the bells that announced Bolivia’s independence declaration.

The Cathedral of Sucre was constructed between 1559 and 1712, an amazing span of time which crosses three centuries, on one of the corners of the Plaza 25 de Mayo, the town’s central square. In the era of instant buildings popping out on modern cities outskirts everyday it is hard to comprehend such a time-span. A result of such a prolonged construction-time was the use of several styles in the edifice, from Renaissance to Baroque with Mestizo influences.

It is by far the most imposing and interesting structure next to the central plaza; the cathedral and its museum are well worth to the hurried visitor a couple of hours. The wonder begins at the fence surrounding the structure; a strange corner topped with an unusually shaped cross announces the visitor that he is about to enter a special place. The elaborated main door – built in brown stones as opposed to the sparkling white of the main structure - is beautiful and shows an extremely elaborated craftsmanship. The clock on the cathedral tower is more than two centuries old and still works.

The cathedral has three naves and its main altar (Altar Mayor) is in Greco-Roman style with the gorgeous Cruz de Carabuco cross over it. The silver-adorned cross arrived from Carabuco, a settlement next to the Titicaca Lake, where another important Bolivian cathedral is placed. Behind this altar is the chorus of canons and six paintings representing the Apostles martyrdom, all of them painted by Montufar. The lateral naves include interesting crystal chandeliers, which are quite unusual in Bolivia. A stone banister surrounds the atrium with a stone cross at one of its angles known as the Rumi Cross. Overall it is probably the most beautiful cathedral in the country and well worth the visit.

The museum is on the cathedral side – away from the plaza – and opens at 10AM; the entrance costs 10BOB ($1.25). The art collection was organized from artworks that belonged to Archbishop Arrien and was afterwards enlarged with contributions from other churches and individuals. This is one of the best collections in Bolivia of Sacred Art from the 16th to the 18th centuries and it includes paintings, silver works and sculptures. The museum structure itself – the cathedral’s backside – is an elegant wonder of colonial times with small inner yards and rooms hanging out of unexpected locations.