Museo de Arte Religioso Riobamba

Inside the beautifully restored 18th-century convent, Riobamba’s top museum houses one of the country’s finest collections of 17th- and 18th-century religious art. More than 200 pieces in 15 different rooms include the painting La Flagelación de Jesús; painted by an indigenous artist in the 17th century, it depicts men dressed in Spanish clothes flogging Jesus, a discreet comment on the mistreatment of the local population by the colonial occupiers. Sadly, the museum’s signature piece, La Custodia de Riobamba, a priceless, meter-tall monstrance inlaid with more than 1500 precious stones, was stolen in 2007. Today the convent is home to 13 nuns.