Iglesia de San Francisco (San Francisco Church), Montevideo

San Francisco Church is located in the Old City and should not be confused with the Church of Saint Francis from the district of New Paris. The current church replaced the earlier building on the corner of Piedras Street and Zabala Square, built by the Jesuits in 1724. That church was transferred to the Franciscans in 1740.

The San Francisco Church has three naves under groin vault ceilings, a transept, and a semi-circular apse. The aisles are exceptionally high. There are four lower chapels on each side of the center nave housed between the buttresses. The tower has five bells in its carillon. Under the church is the crypt of the Lord of Patience.

This building is the epitome of what might be called Eclecticism. It joins several venerable styles within a single work. Greco-Roman classicism meets the Middle Ages in a composition featuring flying buttresses, a respectable rose window, Gothic arched windows grouped by twos and threes, and a Romanesque tower reaching skyward.

The temple we see today is an 1864 rebuild of the church of 1790. The rebuilding was under the direction of French-Uruguayan architect Victor Rabu. The central nave was inaugurated in 1881. In 1901 the tower was completed.

The crypt of the Lord of Patience is a place of quiet veneration in the Jesuit manner. The walls of the crypt are covered by the written prayers and messages of devotees. People baptized here have returned ever and ever again to the altar of the Lord of Patience.