Panteón de los Próceres, Crypt in the historic centre of Lima, Peru

The Panteón de los Próceres is a crypt beneath the former church of the Real Convictorio de San Carlos, now the Centro Cultural de la Universidad de San Marcos. The yellow facade with white stone trim carries a carved portal with a standing figure in a niche and the inscription PANTEON DE LOS PROCERES; a grey dome with a lantern rises at the roofline. The underground crypt was redesigned on a circular plan with a skylight of nearly four metres across opening toward the dome over the transept.

The Jesuit novitiate of San Antonio Abad was founded in Lima in 1608, and its church was destroyed in the 1746 Lima–Callao earthquake. The first stone of the rebuilt church was laid on 11 May 1758, and it was completed in 1766 to a Latin cross plan by Cristóbal de Vargas. After the Jesuits were expelled in 1767, it was renamed San Carlos and became a secular educational institution; in 1876 its assets passed to the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. In 1921 President Augusto B. Leguía decreed the creation of the Panteón de los Próceres, and it was inaugurated on 10 December 1924.

The name honours the próceres, the leaders of the 1821–1824 independence wars whose remains lie in the crypt. On the four pendentives of the crossing dome, José Sabogal painted Fortitude, Justice, Prudence and Temperance in tempera on a gold ground, drawing on Mexican muralism. Above the former choir loft, Teodoro Núñez Ureta added La independencia del Perú in 1971.

The crypt lies beneath the former church of the Real Convictorio de San Carlos, in Lima's historic centre near Parque Universitario. Claude Sahut's 1920s redesign gave the crypt a circular plan, with a skylight of nearly four metres across linking it to the dome over the transept. Look up from below to see that opening.

French architect Claude Sahut removed the Jesuit saints from the facade niches and replaced them with a sculpture of the Madre Patria by Peruvian sculptor Artemio Ocaña, inscribing the new name in golden letters above the entrance arch. He also redesigned the underground crypt on a circular plan, with a skylight nearly four metres across linking it visually to the dome above the transept.