The Church of San Francisco, two blocks south-west of Plaza Bolívar, is one of the oldest churches in Caracas — founded in 1575 with the Franciscan order — and the only one whose colonial gilt altars survived the 1812 earthquake more or less intact. The interior, dim and incense-stained, is the closest thing in Caracas to a Mexican colonial church: side chapels of carved cedar and gold leaf, a heavily gilded high altar, polychrome saints in glass cases.
Open mornings on weekdays; the surrounding street is busy with administrative buildings and is fine by day. A funeral mass for Bolívar was held here in 1842 when his remains were brought back to Venezuela.