Templo y exconvento de San Diego

On Calle Padre Sámano in central Cuautla, wall to wall with the old railway station, the church of San Diego carries more layers of history than most buildings in town. It began in the 16th century as a Dominican visiting chapel. In 1640 the Dieguinos, the barefoot branch of the Franciscans named after St Didacus (San Diego de Alcalá), built a church dedicated to St Joseph here and added a convent with two cloisters. A plaque on the front gives 1801 as the year the façade was finished.

During the War of Independence, in the 1812 siege of Cuautla, Hermenegildo Galeana held the complex as a defensive position. After the Reform its use changed: when the railway came, the convent became a hotel, the orchard became the station (opened on 18 June 1881) and the chapel and church served as warehouses. Once the railway mattered less, the church went back to worship and the cloisters were turned into a museum devoted to Morelos.

The church has a single nave with groin vaults and gilded panels inside; the doorway has a round arch, carved panels and Corinthian details, and the convent to the right opens through stone arches and niches onto a small two-storey cloister. It keeps some unusual relics: a fragment of the True Cross in a silver reliquary, a carved San Diego holding a small bone said to be the saint's, and a splinter from St Alexis's staircase. The 19 September 2017 earthquake damaged the complex, and restoration was finished in April 2019. It is a historic monument under INAH's care and part of Morelos's convent route.