Arroyo Zarco Pueblo

Arroyo Zarco Pueblo is a locality in the municipality of Aculco at about 2,500 m, a few kilometres from the Pueblo Mágico of Aculco and crossed by the México-Querétaro highway. INEGI counted 1,029 residents in 2020; the peak was 1,792 in 1980, and the village has hovered around a thousand people since.

The draw is the former Arroyo Zarco hacienda, which the State of Mexico lists among Aculco's attractions. Inside is its chapel, an 18th-century Baroque building put up by the Jesuits who ran the hacienda and once dedicated to Nuestra Señora de Loreto, according to El Financiero. The paper places it on the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. The chapel keeps mural painting: in 1997, during a roof restoration, traces of the 18th-century decoration came to light under a 19th-century layer. In 2022 INAH confirmed that an unauthorised intervention had been made on the mural and stopped it; the affected area was about two square metres. It is a historic monument and still open for worship.

The rest of the village is rural, with no organised visitor circuit; Wikimedia Commons has photos of a hacienda granary. We found no opening hours for the chapel or the hacienda, so ask in the village; it works well as a short stop on the way to Aculco.