Rooftops and Rembrandt in Leon

Trip date January 2026 1GBP = 49.76 Nicaraguan Cordoba (C) April 2026

Leon wasn't what I was expecting. As one of Nicaragua's three top tourist destinations, I thought it would be a polished tourist-focused town, but instead we were faced with an authentic slightly gritty city that just happened to have tourists. There were scattered bars and restaurants that catered more to international tastes, but they hadn't taken over. Instead of shops selling the usual tourist tat, there were clothing stores, markets and versions of the everyday shops you'd find on the high street back home.

As we walked about the city there was still the colonial architecture we'd come to admire while in Central America. Sturdy squat houses, and plazas with contrasting grand churches but it didn't feel like a set. Despite the careworn grittiness of the city it seemed clean and tidy, and while there were still a few streets with the overly colourful buildings that seem to attract the instagram crowd they weren’t everywhere. Its nice to arrive somewhere and not feel like the place has been designed just to part us from our money. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy street art and rainbow coloured steps, but it's also nice to see city streets busy with people going about their everyday lives.

Before we could get stuck into exploring the city, first we needed a sim card. While we'd made it from the tiny border town of Potosi to Leon through sheer organisational prowess, it would have been good to have the internet in case anything went wrong. Strangely, the best and easiest place to pick up a sim card was from a Claro stand on the main square. Although it initially seemed a slightly dodgy option, we realised the stand was located outside a Claro store and was just there to help tourists avoid the long queues inside. It took us less than 10 minutes to get set up, our plan that would cover our stay cost less than 200 C.

As we do in every city, we explored Leon's churches. The Iglesia El Calvario was a striking church, with a mostly cream coloured facade contrasting against the bold red of its bell towers. Colourful bas-reliefs in pastel tones adorn the outside of the church and when we entered we found ourselves faced with three life size figures being crucified in the doorway. I'm constantly astounded at how unique churches can be (particularly Catholic churches), the adornments, the statues, the paintings, the strange boxes full of parts of different saints. By now I would think it would get repetitive but we still find things that are completely new and different to us.

Another church we had to visit was La Catedral de León de Nicaragua, which we found in the central plaza. The scale of this church was immense, and its style is a unique mix of baroque and neo-classical. One of my favourite aspects of the exterior was the two huge statues that seemingly hold up the lintels connecting the main chapel to the bell towers. Luckily for us, this is one of the churches that let us tromp about on their roof, so we got to see these statues up close not just from the square below.

To find the ticket office we needed to investigate a little. Annoyingly, it wasn't located in the cathedral proper, nor at the door round the side that leads to the staircase to the roof, but round the back of the cathedral down a sloping ramp that leads to the crypt. It was $4 US each for the ticket (which worked out slightly cheaper than the price we could pay in Nicaraguan Cordoba) and the only option was to pay in cash.

We climbed the many many stairs in the narrow staircase that led up into one of the bell towers, took off our shoes and climbed out the bell tower window. Even with socks on the roof was hot, not as bad as a sandy beach on a blistering day but pretty close. We spent half an hour wandering across the two roofs we had access to, taking photos and admiring the views. There were two simple rules we had to agree to; no walking on the many domes and no sitting on the edge - easy! They didn't mention no falling down the drainage holes, so later when Ben made a good attempt of it and his foot disappeared down the pipe, it was perfectly okay.

Outside of the church, looming over the main plaza was an interesting installation in the shape of a large "handsome" woman, next to her was a smaller man. The Gigantona (the lady) is a wooden doll over three meters tall, dressed in elegant and colourful clothing, adorned with jewellery. In local folklore she represents Spain and the colonisers, while the smaller man next to her represents the indigenous people. The wooden doll of the man was specifically built with its head slightly too large showing his intelligence. Before independence figures like these would be danced about in parades and festivals, a subtle way for the locals to use traditions to thumb their noses at their oppressors.

The last place we visited in Leon was visit the "Centro de Arte Fundación Ortiz Gurdián" an art museum that is spread across two sprawling colonial complexes (that was formerly six houses). Each was themed with a different period or style of art. The artists displayed ranged from international names like Warhol and Picasso, classic works from House of Rembrandt and Latin American artists that we new to us like Omar Rayo. We particularly enjoyed the work of American minimalist Frank Stella who we also hadn't seen before.

While there was plenty of art to explore, the buildings themselves were just as interesting. The layout of each house had been kept (with new doorways to connect them) the large high ceilinged rooms surrounded a central courtyard. Each courtyard had been left open to the sky which created a far less sterile environment compared to many art museums we've visited. At 130C each for entry, it was very cheap too.

We enjoyed our visit to Leon, we only stayed for two nights but we felt like this was enough to explore the highlights of the city. If we were feeling more adventurous we could have joined an organised day trip to try our hand a volcano boarding, but as we were still feeling sore after a particularly rocky boat border crossing experience it didn't appeal. It was a nice city and a good introduction to Nicaragua, but we were ready to hop on a bus to see what Granada had to offer.