page_title: León, Nicaragua
section_title: Heritage
hierarchical_section_title: León, Nicaragua / Heritage
caption_attribution_description: Español: Guadalupe iglesia León, Nicaragua por Richard Weiss
context_page_description: León is the second largest city in Nicaragua, after Managua. Founded by the Spanish as Santiago de los Caballeros de León, it is the capital and largest city of León Department. As of 2016, the municipality of León had an projected population of 206,264.
  León is located along the Río Chiquito, some 90 kilometres northwest of Managua, and some 18 km east of the Pacific Ocean coast. León has long been the political and intellectual center of the nation and its National Autonomous University of Nicaragua was founded in 1813, making it the second oldest university in Central America. León is also an important industrial, agricultural, and commercial center for Nicaragua, exporting sugar cane, cattle, peanut, plantain, and sorghum. The city has been home to many of Nicaragua's most noteworthy poets including Rubén Darío, Alfonso Cortés and Salomón de la Selva.
context_section_description: León is rich in both monuments and historical places. Some architectural monuments include:
  Cárcel la 21 (Prison 21) was a jail located in the San Sebastian neighborhood of Leon. It was a detention center which housed political prisoners and was a symbol of torture. Construction began in 1910 and it was first occupied in 1921. The National Heroine Blanca Aráuz was incarcerated in the facility during the guerrilla insurgency following the Constitutionalist War. During the Somoza regime, it housed political prisoners and those who were "disappeared" by the Guardia Nacional. The façade of the building was destroyed during fighting between the National Guard and Sandinistas in 1979. Since 2000 the jail has served as an art museum, which also attracts visitors interested in the macabre.
  Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption of León, a typical colonial baroque building built between 1747 and 1814. Because of its solid, anti-seismic construction, its walls have endured earthquakes, eruptions of the Cerro Negro volcano, and bombings during civil wars. Several cannons were placed on the roof both during the siege of the city by conservative forces in 1824 and during the revolution of 1979 against president Anastasio Somoza Debayle.
  The Assumption is the largest cathedral in Central America and has been the first episcopal seat of Nicaragua since 1531, making it one of the oldest dioceses in the Americas. In the cathedral's crypts are buried several illustrious figures, such as poet and diplomat Rubén Darío at the foot of the statue of St. Paul. Darío was the leading figure of the Modernism Poetic Movement of the late 1800s to early 1900s, and was declared the Prince of Spanish Letters by literary figures of the Spanish-speaking world. Other illustrious figures buried in the cathedral are the poets Salomón de la Selva and Alfonso Cortés, the father of Nicaragua's independence Miguel Larreynaga, classical composer and musician José de la Cruz Mena, and several bishops.
  There are a number of tunnels that connect the cathedral with other temples that were used as hideouts or escape routes during attacks by British, Dutch, and French pirates. However, the tunnels are not accessible to the public, as some have been converted to the sewer system service. In the early 20th century, the first bishop of Leon and the last in Nicaragua, Archbishop Simeón Pereira y Castellón (the same who presided over the funeral of Darío on February 13, 1916) commissioned Granadan sculptor Jorge Navas Cordonero to make a statue of the Virgin Mary to crown the top the façade, and two pairs of Atlantean figures to support the beams that connect the central gable to the flanking bell towers. Navas also sculpted the statues of the twelve apostles inside, along with the columns of the central nave, and the lion at the tomb of Dario, which resembles the Lion of Lucerne in Switzerland.  He also created several moldings in the interior walls and built the Tabernacle Chapel.
  Church of Sutiava is the oldest intact church in Leon considered the main temple after the cathedral. Its construction began in 1698, during magistrate Diego Rodríguez Menéndez's administration, and was completed August 24, 1710. In 1844, during a war with El Salvador, the tower dome was destroyed but it was rebuilt in the early 20th century. The name of the church was formerly spelled "Subtiava" or "Subtiaba", but the neighborhood officially changed the spelling to "Sutiava" since people believed "sub" meant it was inferior.
  Church of San Francisco is part of the convent of San Francisco, one of the oldest in Nicaragua, founded in 1639 by Friar Pedro de Zúñiga. In the interior remain two good examples of plateresque altars. However, its main attraction is the courtyard. Built in pure, Leonese colonial style, this is a grassy expanse with an ashlar fountain at the center from which four radiating walkways, flanked by manicured lemon trees, lead to the surrounding porticoes where some of the columns are covered in red bougainvilleas.  Towards the south, a line of royal palms shade the roof and com
caption: Guadalupe Church
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