This album follows on from Mompós, Colombia.
More pictures of hot, somnolent, slightly morbid Mompós.
The yellow building, one of the few in Mompós to have a second floor, was built to serve the Colegio-Universidad de San Pedro Apóstol.
Apparently, construction started in 1794. However, it was only in 1804 that the new institution obtained a royal charter putting it on the same footing as the three (!!) universities of Bogotá — founded, respectively, in 1580 by the Dominicans, in 1623 by the Jesuits, and in 1653 by the archbishop.
All of those three — the Universidad Santo Tomás, the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, and the Universidad del Rosario — continue to function today. Heaven knows why they needed more than one; and why they all had to be in one place — especially as for a long time they were the only universities in all of Nueva Granada (i.e. northern South America).
Then along came Don Pedro Julián Martínez de Pinillos de Nájera. Born in 1748 in the little town of Torrecilla en Cameros in La Rioja, Spain, he settled in Mompós in 1770 and became a successful merchant. A philanthropist imbued with the ideas of the Enlightenment, he thought that Mompós could do with a place of higher learning. This had languished ever since the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish South America in 1767, which also entailed the closure of their college in Mompós.
According to one reliable-looking source Don Pedro actually bought the former premises of the Jesuits and it was there that the new Colegio-Universidad got going. It is stated everywhere that the Colegio only actually opened in 1809 — the year Don Pedro died — and only granted its first degree in 1810, the year in which, following the collapse of the Spanish monarchy under the impact of the Napoleonic occupation, Colombia declared independence.
What were they doing between 1794 and 1809? And would not the new building have been finished by then? (For what it’s worth, to me those sturdy arcades, especially the flattened arches on the upper floor, somehow have a post-18th-c. look to them.)
„Bolívar lodged here in…“ Of course he did.
Anyway the building must therefore have been habitable by then. The institution itself was renamed in honour of its founder in 1863 (though presumably the original appellation was a form of homage to Don Pedro too). It currently has some 4,000 students.
(Is the tree dying? Probably not. It’s probably just beginning to come into leaf, the dry season nearing its close.)
Next album — Colombia: the Caribbean coast