Old Cathedral of Managua the late 1990s. The clock is now housed at the National Palace of Culture. Old Cathedral of Managua The Old Cathedral of Managua, known as the "Catedral de Santiago" (St. James' Cathedral) in Spanish, is a cathedral in Managua, Nicaragua. The cathedral was designed by Belgian architects. Its neoclassical design was said to have been inspired by the look of the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, France. Construction began in 1928 and lasted until 1938. Belgian engineer Pablo Dambach oversaw the construction of the cathedral. The iron that was used to frame the core of the cathedral was shipped directly
Managua and its economy. To make matters worse, a series of natural disasters, including Hurricane Mitch in 1998, made economic recovery more difficult. After winning the presidential election in 1990, the National Opposition Union began the reconstruction of Managua began in earnest. More than 300,000 Nicaraguans returned from abroad bringing their expertise and needed capital. Businesses mushroomed, new housing projects and schools were constructed, the airport was expanded and modernized, streets were widened, older malls were repaired and new ones were built, and buildings were cleaned up. In 2006, after the Sandinista National Liberation Front came back into power, literacy, health