With its neatly clipped trees and colourful buildings, this delightful plaza is the most intimate of Casco Viejo’s squares. The plaza is enlivened by chic bars and cafes and vibrates with guitar music in the voluptuous heat of the night.

Royal palms shade a dramatic monument of Bolivar, who in 1826 organized a congress here for the cause of Latin American union. Beyond the carved wooden portal, the inner courtyard is adorned with the coats of arms of the republics that participated in the congress; on its east side a bronze bust of Bolivar gazes down on an excavated portion of the original convent.