Tlaquiltenango

Tlaquiltenango is a town a few minutes south of Tlaltizapán, on the edge of the sugarcane valley around Jojutla. Before the conquest it was a Tlahuica settlement in the orbit of Cuauhnáhuac, today's Cuernavaca, and after it the friars made it one of their early bases in southern Morelos. The reason to come is its convent of Santo Domingo de Guzmán.

The convent was built roughly between 1530 and 1550. It was started by the Franciscans and later handed over to the Dominicans, which explains its dedication. Its plain, solid exterior hides chapels and walls with mural paintings. Its most unusual treasure turned up in 1909, when pieces of painted bark paper were found inside the cloister walls: they are the Tlaquiltenango Codex, a set of colonial pictorial documents from around the mid-16th century that record tributes and accounts of the valley. Many of the fragments were stuck to the walls of the lower cloister, where some can still be seen, and others ended up abroad.

It's a quiet place where you can easily spend an hour, and it fits well into a loop that includes Las Estacas, Tlaltizapán's Zapata sites and the lake at Tequesquitengo.