The Ministry of Tourism has announced that a one-year-long archaeological study of the San Francisco Monastery will be carried out by unnamed Dominican experts under Spanish archaeologist Ildefonso Ramirez Gonzalez. The ruin was the first European monastery in the Americas.
The Ministry of Tourism’s Colonial City Promotion Program Coordinating Unit (PFTCC), a subdivision of the Colonial City renovation project funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, will be coordinating the study.
According to reports, the Ministry of Culture will also be taking part in the study through its Archaeological Consultative Commission (Comision Consultiva de Arqueologia) and the National Heritage Department (Direccion Nacional de Patrimonio Monumental).
The study was commissioned in order to obtain the archaeological information needed for interpreting the San Francisco Monastery’s historical and architectural evolution and to inform better decisions for its rehabilitation and conservation. The IDB project involves a US$7 million renovation.
Ildefonso Ramirez Gonzalez has also worked on the Santo Domingo Cathedral restoration project.
Major controversy has surrounded the proposed renovation of the San Francisco Monastery. The winning plan includes a large-scale cement structure that has been met with rejection from dozens of local experts who are calling for the monument to be conserved, not transformed.
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