Santa Catalina Monastery  Enclosed within high walls is the
Santa Catalina Monastery: an enormous complex of rooms, pretty
little plazas and ornate fountains, a maze of narrow cobbled
streets, chapels, beautifully decorated archways, and boxes of
red geraniums. The thick and brightly painted walls contain
numerous cells that once housed over 200 members of the female
nobility who chose to shut themselves away from the rest of the
world in a life devoted entirely to prayer. Some 400 years later
the monastery was opened to the world and since then visitors
have been able to wander through the exquisitely finished gates
and admire the valuable collection of some of the finest
examples of existing Spanish American religious art that
decorate the walls.  Today, about 30 resident nuns live out of
sight in the northern part of the complex. Noteworthy is the
Orange Tree Cloister, painted a sky-blue with beautiful murals
decorating the vaulted arches; the huge 17th-century kitchen
with its blackened walls; and the lon