Parque Nacional Sacromonte

Amecameca's Sacromonte is a wooded hill on the west side of town whose older name is Amaqueme. It rises to roughly 2,570 m and was declared a national park on 29 August 1939; at 45 hectares, according to the federal protected-areas agency CONANP, it is one of the smallest in Mexico. CONABIO lists more than 250 plant and animal species on it, eight of them in a federal risk category, and CONANP names urban growth and careless visitors as the main pressures on the park.

The hill was holy ground long before the Spanish arrived. Totolimpaneca Chichimecs were worshipping Tezcatlipoca here around 1268, and farmers came to ask for rain for their unirrigated maize fields. After the conquest, Fray Martín de Valencia, leader of the first twelve Franciscans sent to New Spain, used a cave on the hill as a hermit's retreat; he died in 1534. In 1584 people from Amecameca handed the Dominicans a hair shirt, a rough tunic and two chasubles he had left in that cave. The friars set up an altar there with a figure of the dead Christ and the relics at its feet, and because the hill stood beside a busy road, it soon became one of the main pilgrimage centres of the viceroyalty.

The sanctuary of the Señor del Sacromonte is now counted with Chalma, Los Remedios and Tepeyac among the four most important shrines of central Mexico. Its only image is a black Christ of the Holy Burial, made of cane paste, which lies in a cave inside the main church. Higher up, on the summit, the small Guadalupita chapel has an old cemetery in its forecourt. The earthquake of 19 September 2017 brought down the sanctuary's tower and damaged the stairway; townspeople organised the repairs themselves, and the church reopened in February 2018, just before Ash Wednesday. That is the big day: from before dawn thousands of pilgrims climb up to receive ashes, with dancers, rockets and masses, and at night the Christ is carried down in procession to the Asunción parish church. Most of the year the hill is quiet, and the top looks out over the town to Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl.