The Jesuit missions of Trinidad and Jesús

Built over 150 years, abandoned in one order

La Santísima Trinidad de Paraná and Jesús de Tavarangue, about 10 kilometres apart in Paraguay's Itapúa Department, are two of the 30 missions the Society of Jesus built in the Río de la Plata basin in the 17th and 18th centuries, seven of them in Paraguay and the rest in present-day Argentina and Brazil. The Jesuits reached the Guayrá in 1588 with the permission of Philip II of Spain. They set out to Christianise the Guaraní and to shield them from the encomienda, the colonial labour system UNESCO calls a condition of virtual slavery. The missionaries studied the Guaraní language and gave it a written form, and gathered people into self-sufficient towns of 2,000 or 3,000. Unlike missions elsewhere in the New World, these did not force their people to Europeanise; many traditions were kept, among them the growing of yerba mate, still the region's signature product.

Each town followed one plan. The church was the core, with the fathers' residence and the houses of the caciques beside it, then workshops, gardens, a cemetery and a jail. A great square opened in front, with crosses or shrines at its four corners and streets 16 or 18 metres wide running out from it between arcaded blocks of housing 60 metres square.

Trinidad, established in 1706, was the most ambitious mission and is the best-preserved urban complex, covering about 8 hectares. Its large stone church, built around 1745 to the design of the Milanese architect Juan Bautista Prímoli, had a fine dome; it is the largest church of all the missions, with an altar carved from a single piece of stone. Around it survive a small church, the college, the cloister, cemeteries, kitchen gardens, the belfry, workshops and native houses, and the old sacristy holds a museum of sculpture and a scale model of the town.

Jesús de Tavarangue was founded elsewhere in 1685 and moved here a few years later. Its church was still being built when the Jesuits were expelled in the 18th century and was never finished: 70 metres long and 24 wide, meant as a replica of the sanctuary of Loyola in Spain. Its trefoil arches are in the Mudéjar style, found in no other Jesuit building of the old Province of Paraguay, and the stone pulpit, friezes of angels and carved stone roses on the door lintels stand out. UNESCO listed both missions in 1993. The road to them is Route 6 from Encarnación.