Capilla de San Ildefonso

At number 706 on Avenida Reforma, wedged against the church of San Marcos less than a kilometre west of the zócalo, stands a small chapel few visitors seek out on purpose. Two institutions shaped it. The Jesuits first ran a college here, teaching philosophy, scholastic theology and moral theology. Then, in the mid-17th century, a hospital for the Indigenous population was planned, with a church to serve its patients; the initiative is credited to Bishop Alonso de la Mota. Francisco de Aguilar carried out the work, at an estimated cost of twenty-three thousand gold pesos.

Under the Jesuits it served as the college chapel. Later the Augustinians used it while their own church, damaged in the Siege of Puebla, was being rebuilt. In the 18th century the hospital building next door became a poorhouse. The structure was damaged in 1863 and restored in the 20th century by Emilio López Vaal.

The façade rewards a close look. Its grey cantera doorway is typical of early Puebla baroque: a round arch with rusticated (cushioned) stonework, a motif repeated around the choir window and laid out in a radiating pattern on the architrave.

Inside, the style is neoclassical and there are no pews, since the space is no longer used for worship. At the far end stands a ciprés (a free-standing altar canopy), and behind it a painted neoclassical altarpiece made of twenty-one panels. On a grey ground imitating stone, the paint fakes a pair of windows and niches holding white statues, giving a flat surface the illusion of depth; no single panel contains a whole window or niche, so the effect only works once they are assembled.