A church where the light comes in sideways and moves across plain white walls all day, designed by two of the monks who pray in it — and a guesthouse where you can stay two nights and eat with them.

The Monasterio Benedictino de la Santísima Trinidad sits on the Cerro San Benito de los Piques, a hill in Las Condes on the eastern edge of Santiago, and its church was designed in 1961 by two members of the community, Martín Correa Prieto and Gabriel Guarda, and built between 1962 and 1964. Chile declared it a national monument in 1981. Atlas Obscura’s contributor places the two architects in the Valparaíso school, and the building is the school’s argument made in concrete: two white cubes meeting at an angle, with the openings placed where the nave cannot see them, so the sun never lands on you directly — it arrives off a wall, and moves. The sanctuary is a cube of light over a bare altar and a small dark cross, and the whole interior is plain white walls and wooden pews, which is why the photograph above looks like a rendering and is not.

The approach was designed as carefully as the church. The drive up the hill turns so that the Andes are revealed before the building is, and in the afternoon the sun sets onto the mountains and picks out their detail; early morning and late afternoon are the times to come. Sixteen monks live here, and some evenings they chant in the church.

Here is the part Atlas Obscura’s listing does not tell you: the monastery keeps a guesthouse, and the community’s own website — written, it says, as “a kind of virtual porter” for visitors who no longer ring the bell at the gate — sets out the terms. The minimum stay is two days, because “it takes time to calm down from the hectic pace of life and get into the monastic rhythm.” Rooms are simple, adults only, a bed and a desk, “yes, they have a great view.” Guests eat what the monks eat, described as simple and frugal — men in the monks’ refectory, women in the guesthouse dining room — and are asked to be five minutes early. You may walk the guesthouse park and the olive groves. The church opens a few minutes before Vigils at 4:20 in the morning and closes after Compline; the monastic shop sells what the monks make, weekday mornings and afternoons and after Mass on Sundays.

What to know before going: the exterior is a plain white box that photographs flat in full sun, and the reason to make the trip is inside, so time a visit for an office or a Mass rather than a midday walk-past. The monastery’s cemetery holds the painter Pedro Subercaseaux, among the monks.