Cerro del Tepeyac

Tepeyac is the first spur of the Sierra de Guadalupe, the line of hills that closes the Valley of Mexico to the north. It rises to about 2,270 m in the Gustavo A. Madero borough, directly behind the Basilica of Guadalupe, which spreads across its foot. The Nahuatl name Tepeyacac is usually explained as "at the nose, or point, of the hill". Before the conquest a shrine to Tonantzin, "our mother", stood on top and drew offerings from far away; Gonzalo de Sandoval destroyed it in 1521 during the siege of Tenochtitlan. In Catholic tradition this is where the Virgin appeared to Juan Diego in December 1531, and where he picked the roses he carried to Bishop Zumárraga.

The first Christian marker on the summit was a cedar cross. In 1666 a baker, Cristóbal de Aguirre, and his wife Teresa Peregrino paid for a hermitage, and in the mid-18th century the priest Juan Mariano Montúfar pulled it down and built the present Capilla del Cerrito, dedicated to Guadalupe and to Saint Michael the Archangel, where the first Mass was sung in 1756. The church has a towerless baroque front in red tezontle stone, estípite columns, Venetian mosaic in the dome and murals by Fernando Leal telling the story of the apparitions. Four marble angels by Ernesto Tamariz were set on the terrace in 1895, and the esplanade was rebuilt between 1945 and 1950 with statues of the four archangels. On a clear day the view takes in much of the valley.

Two routes lead up. On the east side is the ramp laid out by Francisco de Guerrero y Torres and built from 1779 to 1785 to link the Capilla del Pocito with the summit, passing the votive offering known as the Vela de los Marinos. On the west side the Jardín del Tepeyac drops down past the large fountain where tradition places the second and third apparitions, and La Ofrenda, a group of 16 bronze figures commissioned in 1982 from the stage designer Aurelio G. D. Mendoza; most people use it on the way down. Beside the chapel lies the Panteón del Tepeyac, in use since before 1716 and terraced over roughly 17,480 m², where Antonio López de Santa Anna, the poet Xavier Villaurrutia and the architect Lorenzo de la Hidalga are buried; visiting it requires permission from the cemetery office. Behind the summit stretches El Tepeyac National Park, decreed on 18 February 1937 and now mostly planted with eucalyptus.