Ex convento de San Andrés Apóstol

Augustinian friars reached Epazoyucan in 1540, when Fray Pedro de Pareja founded the convent of San Andrés Apóstol; from 1528 the village had been served by Franciscans from Zempoala, who probably put up a first chapel. Most of the work seems to have been finished by 1541, though Archbishop Montúfar still called it a building site in 1556, and in May 1563 the order held a provincial chapter here. Digs in the atrium show the complex was raised over a pre-Hispanic settlement.

Everything sits on a platform roughly 125 by 200 metres. On the west side, nearly four metres above the street, a grand staircase with two curving flights climbs to the atrium, with its stone cross and posa chapels in three corners; the fourth may never have been finished, and its foundations turned up in 1991. The facade blends Romanesque arches, Plateresque carving and Mudéjar-style timber roofing, with the indigenous hand known as tequitqui in the stonework. Inside is a single barrel-vaulted nave, walls rendered to look like ashlar blocks with monograms of Christ and Mary uncovered in 1963, and a 16th-century timber ceiling whose beams span 12.5 metres, one carved with cherubs.

The paintings are the main draw. Four niches in the cloister, one on each side, show the Ecce Homo, the Road to Calvary, the Crucifixion and the Descent from the Cross, with the Dormition of the Virgin over the doorway. The old sacristy repeats and extends the cycle with the Last Supper, the Kiss of Judas, the Agony in the Garden, Noli me tangere and Saint Augustine as doctor, bishop and founder.

The lower cloister has housed the Tomazquitla community archaeology museum, run by INAH, since 1987: basalt scrapers, Teotihuacan-era figurines, obsidian blades and finds from the Tenango and Mesa de San Marcos sites. Its altarpiece room holds the three Epazoyucan panels, 16th-century tempera paintings from a single altarpiece running from the Adoration of the Magi to the Ecce Homo. A separate room shows a mummified woman found in 2004 under a wooden floor during restoration work; photos are not allowed there. The convent has been a listed historic monument since 1933, is one of the geosites of the UNESCO Comarca Minera Geopark, and was restored after the 2017 earthquakes, with work completed in July 2019.