San Gregorio Atzompa

Just 6 km from Cholula, on the alluvial plain stretching southwest of the great pyramid, San Gregorio Atzompa is the seat of one of Puebla's smallest municipalities: it covers only 0.03% of the state and has six localities. The town, classed as urban by INEGI, counted 5,066 residents in 2020 and lies at 2,143 metres. Its neighbours are San Jerónimo Tecuanipan and San Andrés Cholula to the north, Ocoyucan to the south and east, and Santa Isabel Cholula to the west.

More than half the municipal territory is now built up, a sign of how close the sprawl of Puebla and Cholula has come; the rest is split between farm plots, about 39%, and some grassland. The whole area is plain with low hills over Neogene volcanic tuff, and most of its water drains to the Atoyac, with a smaller strip in the Nexapa sub-basin. INEGI's compendium records a temperate sub-humid climate across the entire municipality, with means of 16 to 18 degrees and 800 to 1,000 millimetres of rain a year.

What stands out in Atzompa is its kitchen and its clay. INEGI lists ceramic pieces as the local craft and names chiles en nogada, made with walnuts grown in the region, as the signature dish. The table is rounded out by apple, apricot and peach preserves and by cider, the typical drink of the orchards around Cholula. An INAH photograph kept on Commons shows the church of San Gregorio around 1910, a reminder of how long the temple has presided over the town centre.