Tizayuca

Tizayocan, in Nahuatl, was the place where tiza abounds, a white stone similar to tepetate that the Mexica used in rituals and battle; the town glyph shows a mound sprinkled with dots and crossed by footprints. In colonial times it was an indigenous republic under the alcaldía mayor of Pachuca. The parish was founded in 1569, when Pedro Felipe, a cleric who had come from Spain in 1558, was put in charge of Tizayuca, Tolcayuca and Tecámac, and the present church was finished on 10 August 1617 on the remains of an earlier one.

Tizayuca today is a different place. With 60,265 people in the town and over 168,000 in the municipality in 2020, it is Hidalgo's third-largest city and the only municipality in the state officially counted as part of the Mexico City metropolitan area. It lies on flat ground at 2,268 metres, 39 km south of Pachuca and about 57 km north of the capital. Growth has been explosive: the municipality had 56,573 residents in 2005 and by 2020 had nearly tripled that figure.

The old town is concentrated around the centre. The Parish of the Transfiguration, also called the Divino Salvador, is plateresque, built in a Latin cross of rubble masonry and tezontle, with an octagonal dome and an atrium that was once a cemetery, ringed by walls of inverted arches with three triple-arched gates. The kiosk and main square sit in front. On 6 August the patronal feast of the Transfiguration brings fireworks, street food and fairground rides around the church, and the Expo Feria Tizayuca, held from late January into early February, peaks on 2 February, the day of the Virgin of Candelaria and the Virgin of Cosamaloapan. The Tetetzontlilco community museum, opened in 1997, displays seals, grinding stones, black-on-orange pottery and obsidian tools from the area.