San Miguel Achiutla

San Miguel Achiutla is a small village in the mountains south of Teposcolula, near Tlaxiaco, with a past much larger than its size. Before the Spanish arrived it was home to one of the most important oracles of the Mixtec world, a sacred place where rulers came for counsel. The Mexica conquered it around 1511, and the Spanish arrived about a decade later.

The Dominicans built one of the earliest churches and convents of the Mixteca Alta here, in the middle of the 16th century. Over the centuries, sacred buildings at Achiutla were raised, torn down and reused again and again, both pre-Hispanic temples and Christian churches, and historians see the site as an unusual record of how a community reshaped its holy places over a thousand years.

The convent has been restored and opened to visitors. Inside are original carved wooden altarpieces and paintings by well-known colonial artists, including Andrés de Concha, one of the leading painters of 16th-century New Spain. Few travelers make it here, and the drive through the Mixtec highlands is part of the reward.