Basílica Menor de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe

Nobody in Pachuca calls it the Minor Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe: locals know it as La Villita, the Guadalupe church on Avenida Juárez, where it meets Calle Samuel Carro, south-west of the old centre. Devotion to Guadalupe on this spot goes back a long way. A small chapel is thought to have stood here around 1596, and the 1725 licence for the Hospital of San Juan de Dios, built on donated land, already mentions it. The friars of San Juan de Dios ran the hospital until 1837, when Fray Agustín de Melgarejo, their last prior in Pachuca, died. In the mid-19th century a hermitage was also raised on the old Mexico City road.

In 1907, pushed by Virginia de Hernández, the stone chapel, then about eight metres high and five wide, was enlarged. Around 1923 it became a parish church, and ten years later it was extended towards Calle Cuauhtémoc. The present building dates from a decision taken on 2 February 1952: an architect named Cegral drew the plans and master builders Lazcano and Aurelio Becerra put it up, with carved stonework added to the front over the years. On 17 September 2004 it was announced that the church would become a minor basilica under the title of Santa María de Guadalupe. INAH lists it as a historic monument.

The building is neoclassical, 62 metres long and 24 wide, with a barrel-vaulted nave. Its white quarry-stone front has twin single-stage towers and a round-arched doorway framed by fluted pilasters carrying an entablature with triglyphs. Inside are statues of saints, paintings of the four evangelists by Jesús Becerril and Jacobo Alcántara, and stained glass by Gabriel Peñafiel showing the joyful and sorrowful mysteries and the four apparitions at Tepeyac. Beneath the church, the chapel of San José, nicknamed Las Catacumbas, was planned from the foundations up and now serves as a crypt.

The big day is 12 December. After the solemn midnight mass the atrium fills with people singing Las Mañanitas to the Virgin, while vendors set up stalls of food, clothes and devotional goods outside; the city has prepared for up to 80,000 visitors, with masses every two hours. The rest of the year the neighbourhood is calm and eats well: pozole at La Potzoliza on the corner of Samuel Carro and Vicente Segura, enchiladas de nata at Bistro Express, Churros López, the La Villita bakery and, at night, stalls selling tamales, elotes and esquites.