Santa María Tonantzintla

Santa María Tonantzintla is a small farming village about 4 kilometers south of Cholula, and its parish church is one of the most remarkable interiors in Mexico. From outside it looks like many other village churches in the Puebla valley. Inside, almost every surface of the nave, dome and altar is covered in gilded and painted stucco: cherubs, saints, ears of corn, tropical fruit, flowers and faces that look unmistakably Indigenous, some with feather headdresses.

The name comes from the Nahuatl for "place of our venerable mother", and the hill here is said to have been sacred to Tonantzin, the mother goddess, before the Spanish dedicated the site to the Virgin Mary. The church grew in stages from the 16th century into the 19th, but most of the decoration was done in the 18th century by local craftsmen, which is why it is held up as the finest example of what art historians call Indigenous or folk Baroque.

The village itself is quiet and known for its dairy products. Its big feast is August 15, the Assumption, when a carpet of colored sand is laid inside the church. On the hill above town stands the national astrophysical observatory founded in 1942.