Templo y exconvento de la Inmaculada Concepción

From the street, the atrium of the Zacualpan convent looks like a tall rampart; from inside, the same wall is barely knee-high. The reason is that the complex was built on top of a pre-Hispanic platform, which is why it towers over the centre of town. Zacualpan began as an outlying mission served by the Augustinians of Totolapan and then Yecapixtla. Work on its own convent started between 1535 and 1540 and ended in 1567, under a friar whom sources call either Juan Cruzat or Juan de la Cruz. UNESCO added it to the World Heritage list in 1994, together with the other Popocatépetl monasteries.

The church is a rectangular nave with an eight-sided apse and a round-arched doorway between pilasters, topped by a Renaissance frieze and cornice. A late 19th-century clock and a square bell tower at the northwest corner complete the front. Beside it stands the Rosary chapel, a later addition under an octagonal dome, and to the southwest an open chapel with three arches. According to UnoTV, the altarpieces are the work of Higinio López, the local carver known as the master of Zacualpan.

The best of it is in the friary, two storeys around a quarry-stone courtyard. Each of the twenty pillars of the lower cloister carries a painted Augustinian friar, retouched in tempera, with the original paint still peeking through on some. The vaults keep black-and-white coffering, and in the Sala de Profundis one wall shows a map of the town's houses with scenes of daily life and local plants and animals, facing a Crucifixion. After the 2017 earthquake, Roma Tre University in Italy helped fund the restoration. On Sunday mornings the barter market fills the streets around it, which makes Sunday the best day to see both.