Cerro de la Estrella

A wooded hill about 2,450 m high rises 224 m out of the sprawl of Iztapalapa on Mexico City's east side. Its ancient name was Huizachtépetl, "hill of the huizache trees". Villages stood on its slopes from the Preclassic, around 1000 BC; building picked up between AD 600 and 900, Chichimec groups later founded Culhuacan nearby, and around 1300 the Mexica set up Iztapalapa at the foot of the hill to guard the southern approach to Tenochtitlan.

The summit was the stage of the New Fire, or xiuhmolpilli, the ceremony that every 52 years "bound" the years together and renewed time and the sun. Ceremonies are recorded for 1351, 1403, 1455 and 1507; the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521 prevented a fifth. The platform of the Templo del Fuego Nuevo, with a terrace and stairway, survives at the top and was first excavated by Jorge Acosta in 1974 and 1975. A fired-clay box holding a head of Xipe Tótec turned up under the terrace floor, and more than 200 stones on the hill are carved with faces. Partway up, the Museo del Fuego Nuevo, a pyramid-shaped building opened in 1998, covers the ceremony, the legend of the Five Suns and the old calendars, and shows codices and maps of Culhuacán and Iztapalapa from 1580.

The hill is also the last act of the Iztapalapa Passion play. The custom goes back to a vow made during the cholera epidemic of 1833, and the play has been staged every year since 1843; 2026 was its 183rd edition. On Good Friday the Way of the Cross leaves the centre of Iztapalapa, winds through its eight barrios and climbs the Camino al Cerro de la Estrella to the three crosses, where the crucifixion is enacted in front of around two million people. In December 2025 UNESCO added it to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Local tradition holds that in 1687 the image of the Señor de la Cuevita, now in Iztapalapa's cathedral, stayed for good in one of the hill's hundred-plus small caves.

The rest of the year it is a neighbourhood park. Lázaro Cárdenas's decree of 14 August 1938 protected about 1,100 hectares, but housing has cut that to around 143. There are planted eucalyptus and pines, a running track, a restored trail to the pyramid and a lookout over most of the valley.