Palacio Clavijero and Mercado de Dulces y Artesanías

The Palacio Clavijero is the former Jesuit college of San Francisco Javier, just west of the cathedral on Calle Nigromante. The Jesuits, who had reached Valladolid at the end of the 16th century, built their church here between 1660 and 1695 and the college between 1757 and 1763. Among its teachers was the Veracruz-born Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavijero, who taught here from 1763 to 1766; the building is named after him. The college lasted only until 1767, when Charles III expelled the Jesuits from the Spanish empire.

In the 19th century the building had many lives. It housed the Michoacán state congress, and it was here, in 1828, that the deputies voted to change the city's name from Valladolid to Morelia. In 1847 governor Melchor Ocampo gathered some 4,000 men in its courtyard to form the Matamoros Battalion, which marched to defend Mexico City during the US invasion. It later held a public school, an industrial school and state government offices, while the old Jesuit church next door became a public library in 1930. After a full restoration directed by the architect Ricardo Legorreta, it opened on 7 February 2008 as the Centro Cultural Clavijero.

Today its large arcaded courtyard with a central fountain and its two floors of rooms host temporary exhibitions of modern and contemporary art, often from major national collections, plus concerts, film screenings and workshops; a mural by Adolfo Mexiac, Montañas de Michoacán (2002), fills the main stairwell. The building is in the pink-stone tablero baroque typical of Morelia, with pinnacles along the roofline of its east front. Along its western side, on Calle Valentín Gómez Farías, is the Mercado de Dulces y Artesanías, opened on 14 September 1968 inside the old college: a long corridor of more than 150 stalls selling morelianas, ates, cajeta, chongos zamoranos, candied fruit, cocadas and rompope, along with crafts from around the state such as Purépecha rebozos, copper from Santa Clara del Cobre, Capula catrinas and Paracho guitars.