The expansion of Puebla
in recent years makes CHOLULA , 15km to the southwest, virtually a suburb.
Nonetheless, it retains its small-town charm and has one abiding reason to
visit: the ruins of Cholula , and especially the largest pyramid in Mexico.
A rival of Teotihuacán at its height, and the most powerful city in
the country between the fall of Teotihuacán and the rise of Tula, Cholula
was at the time of the Conquest a vast city of some four hundred temples,
famed as a shrine to Quetzalcoatl and for the excellence of its pottery (a
trade dominated by immigrant Mixtecs). But it paid dearly for an attempt,
inspired by its Aztec allies, to ambush Cortés on his march to Tenochtitlán:
the chieftains were slaughtered, their temples destroyed and churches built
in their place. The Spanish claimed to have constructed 365 churches here,
one for each day of the year, but although there are a lot the figure certainly
doesn't approach that. There may well be 365 chapels within the churches,
though, which is already a few hundred more than the village population could
reasonably need.
One side of Cholula's
large zócalo - the Plaza de la Concordia - is taken up by the ecclesiastical
buildings of the Convento de San Gabriel , built from 1529 on the site of
the temple of Quetzalcoatl. The Gothic main church is of little interest,
but next door is the great mustard-yellow Capilla Real (daily 10am-4.30pm),
topped by 49 tiled cupolas. Moorish in conception, the interior comes with
a forest of columns supporting semicircular arches and immediately recalls
the Mezquita in Córdoba, Spain.
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