Hacienda Cocoyoc

Hacienda Cocoyoc began as a sugar-cane estate in the early 1600s, when the Cuernavaca valley and the Oaxtepec area filled up with mills. According to the researcher Gisela von Woebeser, Admiral Pedro de Izaguirre founded it in the 1610s; it passed to his widow and by 1655 to Catalina de Ordaz. In 1711 and 1714 it absorbed the neighbouring Pantitlán hacienda. Antonio Velasco de la Torre bought it in 1785 and his son brought in coffee in 1823. It later went to the Goríbar family, who sold it in 1875 to Isidoro de la Torre.

The writer Frances Calderón de la Barca came through in February 1841. She was shown the sugar mill, a coffee mill and the aguardiente works, but what she remembered most were some three thousand orange trees and the streams running between flowers. After the Revolution the land reform carved the estate into thirteen ejidos and the main compound stood abandoned. In 1957 Paulino Rivera Torres bought about 68 hectares, restored the buildings and turned roughly 28 of them into a resort hotel, which opened in the late 1960s.

It is still a hotel, with about 286 rooms, gardens, pools and a nine-hole golf course. INAH lists it as a historic monument. The sugar-era remains include the chapel, the main house built around a courtyard, and the stone arches of the early 19th-century aqueduct, which still carries water. It suits a stay or a meal and a stroll through the grounds rather than a museum visit with a ticket office; call ahead if you only want to look around.