Churches of Chiloé

Jesuit missionaries moving through the Chiloé Archipelago by boat began raising wooden churches in the 17th and 18th centuries, a tradition the Franciscans carried into the 19th and one island communities keep alive today. Blending European forms with indigenous craft, the churches sit low against sea and pasture, fully at home in their landscape. UNESCO inscribed the Churches of Chiloé in 2000 as Latin America's outstanding ensemble of ecclesiastical timber architecture.