Written by Vesna Cogurik, Team Member
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| BARRANCO DISTRICT |
Today was a great day…..We started our morning with a visit to the Barranco District, one of the most interesting and inspiring places that we have seen thus far in Lima. We started our tour by foot with all the district offices in the plaza and the Biblioteca, used a wooden bridge more than 100 years old to cross to the side where we saw an excellent view of the ocean, and found a Rotary sign: “
La familia rotaria de Barranco reconoce a esta antigua ermita monumento historico mensajero de la paz”.
From there, we went on to “La rosa nautica” restaurant, which had a great promenade going out with local artists arts and crafts being sold on the side. I just had to go and touch the Pacific Ocean water, and say to myself: “ yes, I am really on the other side of the globe” J.
For lunch, we stopped by a restaurant called “Rustica” which had a three course meal selection, from all the cuisine used in Peru: Peruvian as well as Chinese, tropical fruit of all kind, and milk and rice sweet mix for desert; courtesy of the president of the Barranco Rotary Club. After this great lunch, perfect food and rest by the ocean, we continued our tour to the museum of religious art.
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| CHURCH IN BARRANCO |
The museum “
Pedro de Osma” is the museum of religious art in Lima, Peru. Pedro de Osma was a person that was a lawyer, who never practiced law, but was interested in and collected antiques and antique art. The custos of the museum told us that there is over 5,000 pieces of art in this private collection, that was made into a museum once Pedro and his sister passed away, since both of them were single, were never married and had no children of their own, so when their two nephews inherited the property and the collections, they founded Pedro e Osma foundation that now has the museum and some of the local properties that also belong to the foundation, and made the museum open to the general public, so now everyone that wants to see and is interested in this religious art collection, can come and for a small fee, enter and view the collection. Only 40% of the collection is open to the public, and the other pieces are getting ready to be presented some time in the near future.
The museum also featured one of only 5 religious art, mostly anonymous paintings, which represent the marriage and the union of the two cultures: the Inca culture, and the Spanish culture. The picture “Union de la descendencia imperial incaica con la casa de los Loyola y Borja”, circa 1718, anonymous, is on European tour right now and due to be back in Peru in June of this year. We saw a total of 8 rooms: Manerism Hall; Marian Titles Hall; Angels and Archangels Hall; Restoration Process; Sculpture Hall; Allegory Hall; Cuzco XVII Century Hall and Cuzco XVIII Century Hall. The garden of the museum was amazing, with beautiful smell of flowers like Ylang-Ylang, similar to, but gentler than Jasmine. It was very hard to leave this tranquil place, but we had to go on.
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| JUAN JOSE & THE GROUP AFTER FIRST PRESENTATION |
We continued our tour to “
Portico” detales con arte, where we found hand made art from local artisans and handcrafters, including a place to sit down and have a nice cup of Incan Coffee in the shade of the trees. We all bought something to remember this place by, and took some pictures with the local artisans featured in this place. We finished our cultural visit with this place, and continued on back to our meeting place, so we can get ready for our first presentation at the Barranco Rotary Club. It was a day of days that we will remember, as we all fell in love with Barranco Distrito de Lima.
