Ex Convento de Santa María de la Concepción Atlihuetzia

The former convent of Santa María de la Concepción stands on the main square of Santa María Atlihuetzía, in the municipality of Yauhquemehcan, between Tlaxcala city and Apizaco. It is one of the earliest Franciscan foundations in Tlaxcala, among the dozen or so complexes the friars built in the region soon after the fall of Tenochtitlan. Work began around 1525 and went on in stages for the rest of the 16th century; an unproven tradition credits Hernán Cortés with its design.

At its fullest it had a church with a choir and under-choir, a tower, an open chapel, a cloister, cells, an orchard and posa chapels. What strikes visitors today is the emptiness: the church lost its roof in 1725 and a cyclone brought down the tower in July 1882, so the stone-and-brick nave stands open to the sky, its walls still standing. The arcade dividing the choir from the sanctuary survives almost whole. In the north wall is the so-called Porciúncula door, opened only on 2 August each year, when those who passed through it gained indulgences. Among the fragments of mural painting you can apparently make out a man at confession while a demon urges him to lie and a fiery serpent carries off his soul.

The site is bound up with Cristóbal, son of Atlihuetzía's lord Acxotécatl, who was taught by the Franciscans and killed by his father in 1527 for refusing to give up the new faith. With Antonio and Juan, two boys from Tizatlán killed in 1529, he was beatified in 1990 and canonised in 2017. Bishop Francisco Moreno Barrón named the ruin a sanctuary of the Child Martyrs, and on 23 September 2014 its iron gate, about 4 m tall and two tonnes, a gift from the sculptor Ángela Gurría, was inaugurated. That year the diocese launched a plan to restore the building, which INAH turned down twice; the monument is on the institute's catalogue. Beside it stands the church of the Immaculate Conception, still in use.