Near the Plaza de Abastos we see the historic church of San Agustín, with a baroque cloister and a little-known library. The Colegio Mayor of the same name was founded by the Society of Jesus in 1964 and was attached to the USC, but two centuries earlier it had already been built in baroque style and donated by the Counts of Altamira to the Order of the Augustinian Calzados of Arzúa. Although the convent was abandoned at the time of the exclaustration and was put to various uses, it was recovered by the Jesuits, who currently manage the church and the school.
The building has a neoclassical façade with an image of the Virgen de la Cerca, so named because it comes from a niche in the old wall. The initial project had two towers, the one on the right was never finished and the one on the left was destroyed by lightning in 1788. Built according to the plans of Bartolomé Fernández Lechuga, it has a rectangular floor plan, a barrel vault roof and an average dome without a drum, while on the outside it has a square body with a four-sided roof.
The church has altarpieces by Diego de Sande, who was master builder of the cathedral, and creator of the pathetic processional carving of Christ tied to the column; Simón Rodríguez and Pedro Taboada worked on the main altarpiece, where the carving of the Immaculate Conception stands out.
