Jesuit Missions of Chiquitos

At the end of the 17th century Chiquitos, in the interior of South America between Spanish and Portuguese territory, was largely unexplored. In 1691 the Jesuit José de Arce founded the first mission there, San Francisco Xavier, and eleven missions had been founded by 1760. Their indigenous inhabitants lived in reducciones, settlements modelled on the 'ideal cities' of 16th-century humanist philosophers. The six inscribed missions are San Xavier, Concepción, Santa Ana, San Miguel, San Rafael and San José.

Each settlement was laid out around a rectangular square, with the inhabitants' houses on three sides and the church, workshops and schools on the fourth. The churches adapted European religious architecture to local conditions with wooden columns, galleries and carved banisters. The Swiss priest and composer Martin Schmid designed at least three of them, at San Xavier, San Rafael and Concepción. Only San José was built of stone, on a baroque model.

When the Jesuits were expelled from Spanish territories in 1767, most South American missions were abandoned and fell into ruin, but the settlements and culture of Chiquitos survived. From 1972 the Swiss former Jesuit and architect Hans Roth led the restoration of the churches. Restoration of the church at Concepción, begun in 1975, uncovered more than 5,000 musical scores from the 17th and 18th centuries. The missions were inscribed in 1990.