Ruins of San José de Lules

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About Ruins of San José de Lules

The Ruins of San José de Lules lie beside provincial road 301, about 1 km north of the Lules River and a few kilometers from the town of San Isidro de Lules, between San Miguel de Tucumán and Famaillá. They are what remains of the estancia and reducción of San José del Monte de los Lules, founded by the Jesuits at the end of the 17th century on land donated by Jordana de Trejo, with a school and workshops for the indigenous Lules.

The estancia included a church, cloister, mill, brick oven and carpentry and blacksmith workshops. There the Jesuits cultivated sugar cane for the first time in Tucumán, a province that later became the center of Argentina’s sugar industry. After the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, the Dominicans received the church and convent and took possession in 1781. During the wars of independence, the site served as a camp for patriot armies.

The ensemble visible today is the result of a major 1882 renovation carried out by the Dominicans over the old walls. The church is the main volume, with a façade of two towers in neoclassical lines and, at the main altar, a carved wooden structure with Saint Joseph and the Child. To the north stands the lower convent, with a cloister around a partly ruined courtyard.

The building functioned as a school until 1935 and afterward was abandoned. It was declared a National Historic Monument in 1944 and restored in the 1970s. The grounds are treed, with space to walk between the church and the convent remains.