Basílica del Santísimo Sacramento

Basílica del Santísimo Sacramento sits on a short Retiro street behind Plaza San Martín, where its five towers are easy to miss until you turn onto San Martín. Mercedes Castellanos de Anchorena commissioned the church on her own land and donated it to the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament. French architects Alfred Coulomb and Louis Pierre Léopard Chauvet designed it with the Romanesque cathedral at Angoulême as a reference. Construction ran from 1907 to 1916. The church was consecrated in 1916, and Pope Benedict XV declared it a minor basilica that same year.

The interior is much richer than the narrow exterior view suggests: Venetian mosaics, blue granite, marble, bronze, stained glass, a large gold-and-silver monstrance, and a pipe organ fill the compact church. Anchorena is buried in the crypt below. It remains an active parish, so enter quietly and expect access to shift around Mass.