Monasterios en las faldas del Popocatépetl

On 17 December 1994 UNESCO added to its World Heritage List a group of fourteen friaries built in the 16th century around Popocatépetl, eleven of them in Morelos and three in Puebla. It is a serial property: one listing spread over separate towns, each monastery with its own church, atrium and cloister. In 2021 the World Heritage Committee extended it to take in the Franciscan ensemble of the monastery and cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption in Tlaxcala, so the site now has fifteen components in three states.

The three mendicant orders that first reached New Spain split the towns between them. The Franciscans took Huejotzingo (San Miguel Arcángel), Calpan (San Francisco de Asís), Tochimilco (the Assumption) and Cuernavaca, whose friary of the Assumption is now the cathedral. The Dominicans built at Oaxtepec (Santo Domingo de Guzmán, in the municipality of Yautepec), Tepoztlán (the Nativity), Tetela del Volcán (San Juan Bautista) and Hueyapan (Santo Domingo de Guzmán). The Augustinians, the last to arrive, raised Ocuituco (Santiago Apóstol), Totolapan (San Guillermo Abad), Yecapixtla and Tlayacapan (both San Juan Bautista), Atlatlahucan (San Mateo) and Zacualpan de Amilpas (the Immaculate Conception).

Nearly all follow one plan. A huge rectangular atrium, walled in, fronts a single-nave church that is plain in layout but massive, and the friars' quarters usually sit to the south around a cloister. Crowds of new converts could not fit inside, so Mass was said outdoors from an open chapel, and small posa chapels in the corners of the atrium served as stops for processions, Corpus Christi above all. UNESCO points to the blend of Mudéjar and Renaissance forms with the work of Indigenous painters and stonecutters, to the battlements that give them their fortress look, and to the waterworks that brought water down from the volcano. The friaries doubled as schools, hospitals and storehouses, towns grew up around them, and the model was later repeated in the missions of the north, as far as today's United States.

Morelos markets them as the Ruta de los Conventos, which starts in Cuernavaca and heads east through Tepoztlán, Oaxtepec, Tlayacapan, Totolapan, Atlatlahucan, Yecapixtla, Ocuituco, Tetela del Volcán and Hueyapan to Zacualpan de Amilpas. The earthquake of 19 September 2017 damaged several of them. In September 2023 INAH's Morelos office reported Tepoztlán fully restored, the churches of Oaxtepec, Atlatlahucan and Cuernavaca cathedral back in use, and the others still under works or out to tender; an INAH bulletin of July 2026 says Hueyapan's church reopened more than a year earlier. Before heading to any one of them, ask which parts are open.