Sucre, the white city in Bolivia
Sucre is a lovely city, it is a World Heritage Site, and has a lot to offer for visitors. Learning about its history helps to better understand how it changed to be what it is nowadays. These lines, like traveling in time, will recap a part of the background about this charming city.
Before Spanish conquerors arrived to the territory where currently Sucre is located, it was part of the lands that belong to the Yamparas, an indigenous culture that is still alive (Sunday market is the most important weekly event for the area’s different communities, it is open for visitors).
The city was found by conquerors during their explorations in 1538 with the name of Villa de La Plata, later in 1559 it became to be the Real Audiencia de Charcas headquarters, Royal Audiences were part of the strategy to bring conquered territory in America under Spanish royal control. During that time, the city was known as Charcas, it was one of the most important cities in colonial times due to its strategic location and warm weather all year long.
The important offices reporting to the king in Spain, brought wealthiest families to the region, and Christianism as a religion, most of the houses and churches in the center of the city keep their original architecture, which is the result of blending local architectural traditions with styles imported from Europe. Walking around, makes to realize how life was, especially between 16th and 19th centuries.
Actually, architecture is than well preserved that in 1991, UNESCO named the Historic City of Sucre as World Heritage Site (more details here: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/566/). Citizens and mainly, owners of properties in downtown have several duties to continously do for Sucre to keep this honorable title. Lately it became harder to maintain all downtown of a city in an old era while the world changes quickly and there are new ways to have benefits for using technology improvements.
In my opinion, it is amazing to have a refreshing and quite place: a beautiful white city that takes you in a time travel and where it is possible to move away from rush: Sucre is a great place for a relaxing trip.
Since 1624, Sucre has one of the most renowned public universities: Royal and Pontifical Higher University of San Francisco Xavier of Chuquisaca, in Spanish: Universidad Mayor, Real y Pontificia de San Francisco Xavier de Chuquisaca (U.M.R.P.S.F.X.CH.), it is one of the oldest universities in America. The building that hosted Laws College for many decades appears in the back of 100 BOB bills; currently, it hosts administrative offices, so in case you find it open, do not hesitate to take a look from the first courtyard.
The city was a major player for the Spanish territory in América to be independent. This episode is known in Spanish as Primer Grito Libertario en América which means that it was the first place in América to start a Movement for Independence against Spaniards, that happened in 1809 on May 25th, that’s why the main square has this date as its name. This part of history is something that locals are very proud of until nowadays.
It is important to highlight that this region was the first looking for independence, but it took around 16 years to reach it. The rest of countries that were also part of Spanish territory started after and got their independence before. It was not until 1825 on August 6th, that Bolivia finally born as a new and independent country with this city as its capital which since then is called Sucre.
I would recommend not missing Charcas Colonial Museum for more details about the native culture before the arrival of Spaniards and also about colonial times; and Freedom House for further details about independence revolution, other conflicts Bolivia had and how it ended being the territory it is nowadays.
I hope you enjoyed reading about this topic. As a bonus, you can find some fun facts about Sucre below:
- La Recoleta is a popular viewpoint, it is free and sunsets are perfect from there. This is the point where the city was founded in 1538.
- Cal Orck’o is an open-air museum, it is the longest continous series of dinosaur footprints in the world.
- People born in Sucre is sucrense.
- Sundays are great for a walk in downtown Sucre, cars are not allowed and there are cultural activities in the main square and surroundings.
- Gastronomy in Sucre is very special, do not miss the chance of trying at least one local meal that contains “picante” as part of its name, it has a native sweet chilli peper as part of the recipe.
You can find a brief overview I wrote about Bolivia here: https://medium.com/@bolivianexplorer/bolivia-a-brief-overview-of-a-great-country-72bb8690115d.
