Iglesia de Cristo Rey

The most lavishly decorated of Pasto's colonial churches, built by the Jesuits in the early 20th century but housing a remarkable collection of older religious art rescued from the city's earlier churches. The interior is a riot of gilded woodwork, carved saints, and painted ceilings.

Look out especially for the painted retable behind the main altar and the small side chapels with their bleeding Christs in glass cases — characteristic of the Pasto religious aesthetic.

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The church's interior is one of the most exuberant displays of the Quito School of religious sculpture and painting outside Ecuador. Many of the carved and painted images here were made in workshops in Quito and carried by mule across the high passes to Pasto in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.