[1] For the next forty years, the San Salvador Cathedral was a barren concrete structure of exposed bricks and jutting iron buttresses.

The site was also the stage of several national sagas, including the grand funerals of assassinated political figures, and Romero's fiery Sunday Masses.

Later, the square in front of the cathedral was the site of rapturous celebrations after the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords that ended the Salvadoran Civil War in 1992.

In late December 2012, the Archbishop of San Salvador, José Luis Escobar Alas, ordered the removal of Llort's tiled ceramic mural facade of the cathedral without consulting the national government or the artist.

[4] The festive and colorful facade surrounds a shrine to an image of the Divine Saviour of the World (Jesus, after the Transfiguration, the patron of El Salvador) sculpted by Friar Francisco Silvestre García in 1777.