Fodor's Expert Review Capilla de la Merced

Situated in front of the Río Shulcas, the Capilla de la Merced is a national monument that marks where Peru's constituent assembly met in 1839 to draw up the country's fifth constitution. This document helped to centralize power in the fledgling nation and so promote the growth of its political institutions. The church's neocolonial design is a 20th-century addition, and the product of a 1940 earthquake that damaged many buildings in Huancayo.