Illuminated Block

The Illuminated Block (Spanish: Manzana de las Luces) is a historical landmark in the Monserrat neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Society of Jesus arrived in the newly founded village of Buenos Ayres in 1608, establishing their first mission on a 2 hectare (5 acre) lot which had earlier been aside by Spanish conquistador Juan de Garay for the future town square. The Jesuits' 1661 sale of the property (which would ultimately become the Plaza de Mayo) and a gift of an adjacent lot by Isabel de Carvajal allowed the order to build a new, largely self-reliant mission. Work began in 1686 on the Saint Ignatius Church, a baroque structure completed in 1722, and the adjoining College of St. Ignatius was designed by local architect Juan Kraus and built between 1710 and 1729. Becoming the only academy in colonial Buenos Aires to provide a classical education, and the property possessed the city's finest laboratories, museum and library. The center housed the Office of the Advocate General of the Missions (which oversaw the order's numerous, lucrative Indian Reductions), as well as a pharmacy (the city's first) opened and operated by an English Jesuit, Father Thomas Falkner.

The 1767 suppression of the Society of Jesus led to the mission's closure, however, as well as an associated one housing a hospital, in the nearby San Telmo district. The academy was closed only temporarily, and was converted in 1772 into the Royal College of San Carlos. The temple was usurped and converted into a cathedral in 1775, though Father Falkner's pharmacy formed the basis for Viceroy Juan José de Vértiz's Medical Court of 1780 - the first school of medicine in what is today Argentina. Viceroy Vértiz also established the city's first printing press at the site, in 1780, as well as an orphanage funded by sales of the facility's printed material.

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