Plazoleta de la Merced
cultural heritage site in Peru
The Plazoleta de la Merced, also known as the Plazuela de la Merced, is a public square located in front of the Basilica and Convent of Nuestra Señora de la Merced, at the fifth block of the Jirón de la Unión and its intersection with the Jirón Huancavelica, in the historic centre of Lima, Peru.
History
Located in front of the Basilica de la Merced, the square was the scene of two important political moments in the republican history of Peru. In 1821, it was the location of one of José de San Martín's proclamations of the independence of Peru. Previously, he had done it in the city of Huaura and in the Plaza Mayor.
Subsequently, on June 1, 1956, the then candidate for the presidency of the republic, Fernando Belaúnde Terry, held a march in protest against the action of the National Jury of Elections, which did not agree to register his candidacy just sixteen days before the elections. This protest march was repressed with water jets thrown at the candidate, but it managed to get the state body to register his candidacy. Belaúnde lost that year's election to Manuel Prado Ugarteche.
Monument
The square is the site of a bronze monument made by David Lozano (Callao; January 7, 1865 — Lima; January 16, 1936) of former president Ramón Castilla, inaugurated on June 6, 1915, by then president Óscar R. Benavides, Marshal Andrés Avelino Cáceres, and then mayor of Lima, Federico Elguera.
Originally planned to be located in the balneario of Chorrillos, it has been in its current location since 1915. In 2018, it was declared part of the Cultural heritage of Peru alongside the other statues located within the historic centre of Lima.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Plazoleta de la Merced” as cultural heritage site in Peru. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as cultural heritage site in Peru. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5854070. Authority coordinates are -12.048, -77.033. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1821, 1956, 1865 and 1936.
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This entry incorporates text from “Plazoleta de la Merced” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.