Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán

The church and former convent of Santo Domingo de Guzmán stand at the north end of the pedestrian Andador Macedonio Alcalá, about half a kilometre from the Zócalo, on a broad stone plaza planted with agaves. Dominican friars reached Oaxaca in 1528, the city council granted them this land in 1551, and building began in 1572. Work went slowly until earthquakes in 1603 and 1604 wrecked the order's earlier convent of San Pablo; the complex was opened a few years later, raised to a house of university studies in 1623, and the church's decoration was finished in 1666. The Capilla del Rosario was begun in 1724.

The church is a Latin-cross building in the New Spanish Baroque style, built of cantera stone with walls and twin towers kept low and massive against earthquakes. Its three-tier facade carries figures of Saint Dominic and Saint Hippolytus, and its domes are faced with tiles. Inside, the vaults are covered in gilded and polychrome stucco; under the choir, just inside the door, a gilded vine traces the family tree of Saint Dominic's order. The church still holds regular masses; on weekends it is one of the city's favourite places for weddings.

The convent had a rough 19th century. Royalist and insurgent troops occupied it during the War of Independence, and after the Reform laws of 1859 it was handed to the army and used as barracks, warehouse and stables; President Porfirio Díaz returned the church to Catholic worship in 1902. The army left the convent grounds only in the 1990s. Today the restored cloisters house the Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, run by INAH, whose 27 rooms run from the valley's earliest farmers through the colonial era. Its best-known room holds the gold, silver, jade and carved bone found by Alfonso Caso in 1932 in Tomb 7 at Monte Albán. The upper floors give views over the Jardín Etnobotánico, laid out on the friars' old orchard.