In 1531, the invading Spanish authorities began a ‘trial Republic of Spaniards for Spaniards’ in the valley of Cuetlaxcoapan, naming it ‘City of the Angels’. The new city was supposed to show that a recently arrived Spaniard in these new lands of promise was capable of “self-sustainment without having to depend on the taxes of…

Cholula, just a short taxi-ride out of Puebla, is the oldest continuously inhabited city in Mexico and, at its zenith, the second largest city in the land after Tenochititlan, with an estimated population of 100,000. It’s thought that early Cholula was established around 500 BC and through several periods of development by 600 AD the…

We’re staying in a rather gorgeous 300-year-old casa in the very heart of Puebla, just a couple of blocks back from the Zócalo in the cutely named Barrio de los Sapos, the ‘Neighbourhood of the Toads’ and just off the Callejón de los Sapos, the ‘Alley of the Toads’ – named from colonial times when…

Officially there are 288 churches in Puebla, but ask any local and they’ll swear there are 365, one for every day of the year. And on first impression they might be right, as there does seem to be a church on pretty much every street corner here. Some of them so spectacular that they take…

We’re saying farewell to Cuernavaca after two glorious weeks in what Alexander von Humboldt referred to as ‘La Ciudad de la Eterna Primavera’ (City of Eternal Spring)  – that’s two weeks of gorgeous warm sunshine and flawless blue-sky days, so the city really does live up to its name.  In the early to mid-decades of the 20th Century,…

The Santa Prisca Church in Taxco is just too exquisitely over the top to bury in a general post. So this post is dedicated to this incredibly ornate example of Mexican baroque architecture and the glorification of martyrdom, the central subject for the church altar pieces and paintings. Prisca was a young Roman woman tortured…

Despite the US State Department’s warning ‘Do Not Travel to Guerrero’ – due to widespread crime and violence – of course we went there, being the intrepid ‘silver surfer’ travellers that we (like to think we) are. How could we not see the colonial mountain-top town of Taxco? And we were assured that the centre…

Having said all I’ve said about the sorry state of the barrancas in Cuernavaca, it was a pleasant surprise to discover one shining light in urban conservation and ecological protection. The Barranca de Chapultepec is a beautiful park – a real oasis in the middle of the city. It’s a 3 kilometre walk out of…

Across Avenida Morelos from the Cathedral, el Templo de la Asuncíon de María, lies the Jardín Borda, a sizeable walled garden of terraces, shaded paths, fountains, large ponds and even a lake for pleasure boats. It’s a beautifully quiet and tranquil place, away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Cuernavaca where local traffic roars up…

The ancient, elevated city of Xochicalco is around a 35k drive out of Cuernavaca into the dry mountainous Morelos countryside. The name Xochicalco is Aztec Nahuatl (actually bestowed centuries after the citadel was abandoned) meaning ‘In The House of Flowers’, but the site was first occupied by the Olmec-Xicalanca, a Mayan group of traders from…