Cerro de San Juan

Cerro de San Juan, Centépetl in Nahuatl and today also Cerro de La Paz, is a small volcanic hill about 3 km west of central Puebla, beside the Atoyac River. It stands at about 2,200 m above sea level but rises only 40 m above its surroundings, and it is one of three hills framing the valley where the city was founded. Centépetl probably means "hill of maize"; in colonial times it was called San Juan Centepec after a hermitage to Saint John. Around 1600 Captain Gaspar de Jimena Villanueva built a chapel to the Virgen de Gracia on top; it was looted in 1645 and again in 1725, and left in ruins.

The hill mattered in the French Intervention. In 1863 Puebla's defenders left it unoccupied and General Frédéric Forey set up his headquarters there, a lapse counted among the reasons the city fell on 17 May after a two-month siege. In 1867 Porfirio Díaz took it unopposed on 9 March and lodged in Manuel María de Zamacona's house on the summit. Before dawn on 2 April a resin-soaked cloth set alight on the hilltop signalled the assault that returned Puebla to the Republic. The street his troops marched down became Avenida del Vencedor, then Avenida de la Paz, and since 1906 Avenida Juárez.

From 1932 the hill was laid out as the La Paz neighbourhood on garden-city lines, and today it is almost entirely built over, with offices, restaurants, schools and hotels. On top stands the parish of Nuestra Señora del Sagrado Corazón, the "Iglesia del Cielo", visible from much of the city, beside a civic square with a monument to the Mexican flag.