Santiago Tlautla

The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro runs through Santiago Tlautla, a World Heritage Site since 1 August 2010. Of the route's sixty sites, the village falls in the stretch between the La Colmena bridge and the old Hacienda de La Cañada, where the road is best preserved; the parish, the soldier's monument and the bridge are here.

The Parish of Santiago Apóstol dates from the eighteenth century. It keeps an atrial cross dated 1749, has a single nave divided by three arches into four sections and, on the right, a square two-storey tower topped by a pyramidal mass with a cross. The Tlautla Bridge, known as the Puente de las Ánimas, has three openings with quarry-stone arches carried on buttresses and rubble-masonry supports, and bears a stone pavement; the arches are uneven, some higher than others because of the ground. It earned its name because people say they have seen or heard La Llorona and other wandering souls.

The village stands at 2,100 metres in rolling Mezquital Valley terrain, with a temperate sub-humid climate and summer rain; the Tlautla River gives its name to the sub-basin. In 2020 it had 2,567 inhabitants in 677 homes, 2.8% of the Tepeji del Río population. It had 686 in 1900 and 1,520 in 1990.