San Felipe Teotitlán

San Felipe Teotitlán lies in the far northeast of the State of Mexico, in Nopaltepec municipality, at 2,453 m on a flat farming plain. INEGI counted 3,974 people in 2010, making it the most populous locality in the municipality. It sits about two kilometres north of Nopaltepec, the municipal seat, joined by a paved road, and roughly five kilometres south of the Hidalgo border. The name already appears in local history around the year 1200, when the king of Xaltocan posted boundary guards at Nopaltepec, Teotitlán and Atepoxco.

What there is to see is nearby: the Padre Tembleque Aqueduct, about five kilometres north, where the Papalote river forms the state line with Hidalgo. Friar Francisco de Tembleque planned it to bring water from the springs of Cerro El Tecajete to Otumba, and in 1562 the water reached a fountain in the middle of that town. Its largest section, the Monumental Arcade, has 68 round arches over 904 m and reaches 38.75 m high. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Before the Conquest the shortest route between the Gulf coast and Tenochtitlan ran through this municipality, the road along which fresh fish was said to travel to Moctezuma's table. Today people live from farming (nopal and prickly pear in July and August) and from sewing workshops. A single well in San Felipe supplies the whole municipality. It is a working village; there is no published tourist services of its own, and the reason to come is the aqueduct.