Templo y Exconvento de Santiago Apóstol de Ocuituco

On 8 June 1534 the Augustinian friars broke ground in Ocuituco on what became their first convent in New Spain. They had wanted to start in Mexico City, but Charles I refused, since the capital was already paying for Franciscan and Dominican houses. They picked Ocuituco because its people were asking for missionaries and because the town was an encomienda held by Bishop Juan de Zumárraga. Local residents worked on the building as part of their encomienda dues.

Things soured with Zumárraga quickly. The bishop complained that such a large building was eating up the encomienda's resources, and from 1537 to 1541 the friars moved to their convent at Totolapan. They came back in 1546 and finished the work in 1547; some guides say Zumárraga received here that year the papal bulls naming him Mexico's first archbishop. The order left again in the 18th century: the church stayed open, but the cloister sat unused until 1965, when the Augustinians returned and began restoring it. In 1977 it became a novitiate for a short time.

Since 1994 it has been one of the Earliest 16th-Century Monasteries on the Slopes of Popocatépetl, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A broad atrium spreads in front, and the plain Renaissance façade carries no Augustinian emblem at all. The best-known piece is in the cloister courtyard: a 16th-century lion fountain, copied for the Calvario church in Cuernavaca. Traces of Augustinian mural painting survive on the ceilings of the cloister walks. Access to the cloister depends on parish activities, and check the Popocatépetl alert level before heading up this way.