Things to do
5-
Biblioteca Palafoxiana
Bishop Palafox gave his library to the seminary in 1646 on condition that anyone able to read be admitted, which makes it the earliest public collection in the Americas. Three tiers of carved cedar shelving hold forty five thousand volumes beneath a gilded altarpiece, a room UNESCO has placed on its Memory of the World register. Visitors keep to a walkway along one side, and a quarter of an hour is enough.
-
Capilla del Rosario
Every surface of this side chapel in Santo Domingo is gilded plaster: angels, vines, saints and allegories crowded up into a dome that drops light onto a silver-framed image of the Virgin. Completed in 1690, it was being called the eighth wonder of the New World within a generation. The chapel is small, free and still used for prayer, so twenty quiet minutes suffice.
-
Great Pyramid of Cholula
Grass and trees cover a mound in Cholula that is in fact an adobe pyramid, enlarged over centuries until its volume passed that of anything in Egypt, with a yellow Spanish church planted on the summit in place of the old temple. Archaeologists drove tunnels through the core and a stretch is open. The climb takes twenty minutes and, on clear mornings, ends with Popocatépetl in view.
-
Museo Amparo
Two linked colonial houses on the street south of the cathedral hold a private collection running from Olmec and Maya sculpture through colonial painting to changing shows of contemporary work. Enrique Norten's remodelling added steel and glass upstairs and a roof terrace whose view takes in the tiled domes of the centre and, in clear weather, the volcanoes. The café up there is worth the lift.
-
Puebla Cathedral
Two bell towers of close to seventy metres, the tallest in the country, rise over the main square from a cathedral begun in 1575 and finished under Bishop Palafox seventy years later. Inside, Manuel Tolsá designed the octagonal altar canopy in onyx and marble. Grey cantera stone keeps the whole thing sober. Free to enter, though the towers open only for guided climbs.