The Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico features a thick, volcanic tezontle facade that carries the deep red color of the city's colonial era. This mansion originally belonged to the Counts of Santiago de Calimaya, who built it in the late…
Sinking Palaces of Centro
This walking route traces the dramatic architectural warping of Mexico City's historic center, where heavy colonial churches and baroque palaces are slowly sinking into the ancient clay lakebed beneath them.
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1. Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico
2. Parroquia de la Asunción Sagrario Metropolitano
The Sagrario Metropolitano is defined by its facade of tezontle, a volcanic rock that glows in a deep, porous red. It serves as the parish church for the adjacent Metropolitan Cathedral, built between seventeen forty-nine and seventeen…
3. Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral
The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven sits on the Zocalo, distinguished by its immense gray stone facade and two towering, uneven bell towers. Workers began building this structure in…
4. Ex Teresa Arte Actual (Extemplo de San José y Santa Teresa la Grande)
The heavy stone facade of Ex Teresa Arte Actual is split by a jagged, vertical crack that runs from the roof toward the street level. This former convent, built in the seventeenth century for the Carmelite order, survived major earthquakes…
5. Nuestra Señora de Loreto Church
The dome of Nuestra Señora de Loreto is clad in vibrant, blue and yellow Puebla tiles that shimmer against the city skyline. It remains the last colonial church built in Mexico City before the struggle for independence began in eighteen…
6. Parroquia de la Santísima Trinidad
The Parroquia de la Santisima Trinidad stands out with a heavy, Churrigueresque facade carved from dark red tezontle stone, dominated by a towering stone relief of the Holy Trinity. Built in the mid-eighteenth century for the Confraternity…