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CHOLULA |
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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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