Cholula, Mexico Summary

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.