The Patio and the Alley

An austere patio with a sundial, where time seems to have stood still, leads out to Santa Catalina Alley (Pasaje Santa Catalina). This quiet, peaceful passage, in the words of the poet Fernández Moreno, "begins in a church and ends in a church."

The alley was once closed off by a wall between the Cathedral and the Cabildo, and only after the Battle of Caseros (1852) did it become possible to walk through it. Next to it was a burial ground, where Juan Facundo Quiroga, killed in the ambush at Barranca Yaco on February 16, 1835, was temporarily buried.

On the corner of Santa Catalina Alley and Independencia Street, in a small courtyard of the Cathedral, stands the monument to Blessed Fray Mamerto Esquiú, OFM, Bishop of Córdoba, known as the "Orator of the Constitution."