Iglesia San Martín de Tours

The town's distinctive cruciform church, founded by the original Black Forest settlers in 1862

The Iglesia San Martín de Tours sits at the highest point of the town, with views down across the red-tiled roofs and the surrounding cloud forest. The whitewashed walls, the steep timber roof, and the unusual equal-armed cruciform plan all mark it out from any other church in the country. The original wooden altar and pulpit are still in use, and the cemetery beside it holds the graves of the first settlers — names like Gerig, Breidenbach, and Strubinger that still recur in the modern village.

Sunday Mass is the best time to see the interior in use, with German hymns still occasionally sung. The church is open during daylight hours.

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A story
The church of San Martín de Tours is one of the most unusual religious buildings in Venezuela. Construction began in 1862 — almost twenty years after the founding of the colony — and it was modelled on the village churches the settlers had left behind in the Black Forest, in a cruciform plan with both arms of the cross of equal length. It is one of very few examples of this Germanic plan anywhere in the Americas.

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