Jesuit Mission Ruins

The ruins of the Jesuit missions of the Guaraní lie within day-trip distance of Encarnación and are among the most impressive archaeological sites in South America. The nearest are Trinidad (28 km) and Jesús de Tavarangue (36 km), both UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Trinidad is the better preserved of the two: the church facade, with its carved frieze of angels playing Baroque musical instruments, is still largely intact, and the scale of the complex — churches, workshops, residences, a cemetery — gives a vivid sense of what these communities were. Jesús was still under construction when the Jesuits were expelled and was never completed; the unfinished arches and scaffolding marks give it a haunted, suspended quality. Both sites can be visited in a single day from Encarnación.

things to do sight
A story
The Jesuit missions of the 17th and 18th centuries were an ambitious experiment in theocratic communism: self-governing indigenous communities under Jesuit direction, producing food, crafts, and music at a level that astonished European visitors. At their peak the missions housed over 100,000 Guaraní. They were destroyed within years of the Jesuits' expulsion from the Spanish Empire in 1767.

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