La Huatápera (Museo de los Cuatro Pueblos Indios)

La Huatápera stands on the north side of Uruapan's main square, facing the Plaza Morelos and Plaza de los Mártires. Its name is Purépecha for 'meeting place', and by tradition it was built over a pre-Hispanic platform. Fray Juan de San Miguel, the Franciscan who laid out colonial Uruapan, founded it in 1533 as the Hospital Real de la Purísima Concepción, often counted among the first hospitals in the Americas. It did more than heal the sick: it was a centre for teaching the Christian faith and for organising the native population by trade, and it later served as a community centre and school. An earthquake wrecked the hospital in 1806.

The building mixes indigenous and colonial work: walls of volcanic stone and cantera, wooden beams, tejamanil shingles and tiled roofs around wide courtyards with arcades, with details often described as Mudéjar. Its chapel, known as the Santo Entierro, has a Plateresque cantera doorway; above the arch a niche holds a figure, either Saint Francis or Juan de San Miguel himself, flanked by the coats of arms of the Franciscans and the Spanish crown. Inside, the restored chapel has images of angels playing musical instruments and keeps a 16th-century mural.

Today the complex is the Museo de los Cuatro Pueblos Indios, devoted to the indigenous peoples of Michoacán, and it has about four rooms of permanent and temporary exhibitions. One shows clothing, pottery, crafts and ceremonial objects of the state's peoples; another explains maque, the old lacquer technique for which Uruapan is known, used on trays, boxes, chests and gourds. Each month the museum also shows a piece by a local artisan. Entry is free, and the Mercado de Antojitos just behind it makes a good stop for corundas, churipo or carnitas after the visit.