Capilla de los Reyes Magos

This stone chapel stands in Tetela del Monte, an old village in the wooded hills of northern Cuernavaca at about 1,790 m, on the corner of León Salinas and De las Moras streets. It is credited to the Franciscans, who reached the region in 1524: Fray Toribio de Benavente, known as Motolinía, was in Tetela in 1526 and, by local accounts, oversaw the building between 1530 and 1540. It sits on a pre-Hispanic teocalli that some researchers link to Coatlicue and others to Tonantzin or Tláloc.

It is a single-nave, hall-plan church with a plain facade that at first had bell gables instead of a tower. The tower came later: the belfry is dated 1677 and holds two bronze bells cast in 1768 and 1808. The atrium cross carries imagery considered 16th-century, and the atrium wall was designed and built in the 20th century by John Spencer, who mixed old pieces with new work. The chapel takes its name from a painting of the Adoration of the Magi, showing Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar, which has hung there for almost two centuries.

Wikipedia calls the style primitive folk Baroque and records a reconstruction in 2018. Pilgrims walking to the shrine of Chalma used to stop here. The big celebration is the Three Kings fiesta on 6 and 7 January, with toritos, firework castles and jaripeos; in November, for Christ the King, the painting is covered and an image of Cristo Rey is put on display. The chapel is not one of the World Heritage friaries, but it is contemporary with the old Franciscan friary that is now Cuernavaca cathedral, which is, and it shows what a village chapel of those first decades looked like.