our hotel -history

La Mision de Fray Diego is an old house of XVII Century, recovered and turned into a charming and exquisite hotel boutique. 400 years ago this house was part of the Temple of Nuns or Our Lady of the Consolation, which is contiguous at the moment in the convent end. Finalized convent the 22 of June of 1596, that now works like chapel. From second half of century XX it lost great part of its structure, happening at the hands of rich individuals or the Government, like the cloisters of the Concepcionistas nuns, until the 12 of October of 1867, when they were expelled by general Manuel Cepeda Peraza, and that today is the House of the Municipal Culture. The convent got to include all the block between present streets 61, 64, 63 and 66 A.

The convent was built with donations in money or properties of individuals, ecclesiastics and nuns, and it was maintained with the entrance dowry gave by their families, besides product elaboration for their sale like candies, cakes, breads, fruits, etc. In their offices, were moneylenders with very solid financial sources. In this rooms they closed great number of commercial agreements.
The reason of its built was because the son of the Governor, Alvaro de Vozmediano died in a shipwreck on way to Spain, and his fiancée, Carmita de Ordoñez, of so deep pain decided to consecrate her life to God in a monastery, but there wasn´t in Merida.
Then, his father promoted the construction of the building.The urban nuns besides their own workings of their cult, formed an establishment of education for children and a house of charity for destitute old ladies.

At the time of the Colony, the convents were like cities that reproduced the social scale of the outside, where the nuns and pupils lived, widows and young women or servants.

To be part of the convent the girls had to decided by their self , be legitimate daughter, belong to a family of good moral, be 15 to 17 years and good health, pay to the dowry and the expenses of ajuar and the ceremony of habit taking.

There is a latent myth in the city of Merida that could until now not have been verified nor denied. Some people think there was communication between the church of Nuns and the Cathedral through an underground conduit, in order that the enuns did not have contact with the outer world. In the town of Maní, 100 km from Merida, they even affirm that there was a passage underneath the Earth that went from San Miguel Arcángel de Maní and arrived to the church of Nuns.