Convento de San Juan Bautista (Tetela del Volcán)

The friary of San Juan Bautista fills the centre of Tetela del Volcán, facing the main square and the town hall on the slopes of Popocatépetl. Dominicans founded it, with Fray Juan de la Cruz, though the dates vary by source: Wikipedia gives building work from 1533 to 1574, México Desconocido dates it to 1562, and other guides to 1571-81. Before the conquest the area was home to Olmeca-Xicalanca people and later to Xochimilcas. Since 1994 it has been one of the Earliest 16th-Century Monasteries on the Slopes of Popocatépetl, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The stone complex covers about 1.9 hectares on two levels, with the atrium and its cross on the middle one, and it has an open chapel. There are three ways in: the main entrance, one from the square and a back gate on Bulevar Adolfo López Mateos. The real draw is the mural painting in the cloister, true fresco touched up in tempera: the twelve apostles, founders of the Dominican order, scenes from the lives of Christ and John the Baptist, and martyrs, while the vaults over the walkways are full of cherubs, some fighting evil spirits and some fighting each other. The sacristy has a timber-beam ceiling in the Mudéjar tradition.

Those murals have had a hard time. An INAH article blames damp, collapsed vaults and a cement floor laid in the lower cloister for speeding their loss in the late 20th century. After the earthquake of 15 June 1999, Mexico asked UNESCO for emergency aid; the World Heritage Fund approved 45,000 dollars donated by EF Educational Tours, and conservation work and a training workshop began around 2002.

The earthquake of 19 September 2017 toppled the tower and, with it, the clock that Porfirio Díaz gave the town for the centenary of Independence, whose chimes carried across most of Tetela. In November 2023 the complex was still in an unfinished restoration programme, and Wikipedia says Mass is held through the rear entrance while work continues. It remains a parish of the Diocese of Cuernavaca.