The Convent of Santa Teresa was founded in 1692 as a cloistered Carmelite convent, and it continued as such until the 1970s. Since then it has operated as a museum, and it is among the most rewarding in Potosí. The building itself is beautiful — a baroque church with a fine stone facade and a sequence of interior courtyards and cells that are atmospheric in their austere simplicity.
The art collection inside is the reason to visit. Three centuries of colonial donations produced an extraordinary concentration of paintings, polychrome sculpture, silverwork, and embroidered textiles. Many pieces were made locally in Potosí workshops by indigenous and mestizo artisans who developed a distinctive regional style. Guided tours (Spanish only, usually) take you through the church, the novitiate quarters, and the enclosure that was off-limits to all outsiders until the nuns departed. The admission fee is modest and the tour typically runs about ninety minutes.