Parroquia San Francisco de Asís de El Monte – Architecture

This church has the distinctive feature of being one of the traditional building methods in rural areas of Central Chile. It is based on adobe, material composed of mud, sand and straw. Church is very simple and has thick walls for better support. It features two main parts: the temple itself and the tower, both of which are connected. The bell tower has a clock, currently out of service, in the hexagonal structure drum ending up in a small semicircular dome with a small and rustic spire sustaining a cross. The temple structure is a simple parallelepiped, with a lintelled roof crowned with a gable roof. It depicts a single front door with the upper lintel in sight complemented by a small circular bull’s eye window located overhead. On both sides of the church, there are traditional passageways, typical of Chilean houses, with pillars supporting a roof covered by Chilean tiles.

The church both inside and outside is unpretentious. It is based on a single nave with exposed beams, in which there are entrance doors with exposed lintelled structure on both sides in the central part of the nave: one coming from priests’ bedrooms and another leading to an adjacent backyard, formerly used as a cemetery. Bell-bottomed windows show the thickness of walls in this building. Most of indoor areas depict exposed adobe walls, therefore, traditional construction method of rural towns can be observed by visitors.