Convento de San Francisco, Franciscan friary in Santa Fe, Argentina.

The Convento de San Francisco is a Franciscan complex in central Santa Fe featuring a single-nave church with wooden ceilings assembled without nails. The walls use rammed earth construction, a traditional building method that provides durability and thermal regulation.

Franciscan monks established this religious site in 1673, with the main church completed by 1688. The surrounding buildings and cloisters were developed gradually over the following decades.

Inside, a polychrome wooden Christ by Alonso Cano, carved from a single piece of wood, was donated in 1653 by Queen Mariana of Austria. A San Benito de Palermo image came from the descendants of Juan de Garay, and a San Francisco Estigmatizado was brought from Peru in 1794, with Christ flying on butterfly wings. The main altar, made in Spain in the 18th century, was first offered to the Jesuits, who refused it.

The convent stands on the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, beside the Juan de Garay and Estanislao López museums. The main door opens onto the front, with two side doors: one leads to a gallery facing the west street, the other to the cloister gallery. A smaller fourth door connects the sacristy.

During a flood, a jaguar reached the convent on a floating camalote raft carried by the Paraná River and slipped in through a window. The priests closed the room without noticing it; the next day the hungry animal attacked, killing three friars and a layman, Juan Galván. A wooden table still shows the claw mark.