Palacio de Gobierno de Tlaxcala

The Palacio de Gobierno stands on one side of the Plaza de la Constitución, the main square of Tlaxcala city, and has been the seat of power, first of the colonial province and then of the state, since the 16th century. Work began in 1545 on a complex that combined the town hall, the public granary and the royal offices (Casas Reales). It has been through a 17th-century flood, a 1711 earthquake that forced a rebuild, and a fire at the start of the Revolution, after which the roof of the central block was redone.

The front mixes periods. The main doorway, of carved stone with plant motifs, is plateresque, with a Baroque mortar-work balcony above it. The brick walls were given their woven-looking "petatillo" brick facing in 1926. Across the front are the state arms three times, an angel, a Porfirian eagle between Solomonic columns and a replica of the Dolores bell installed under Governor Joaquín Cisneros Molina; the Independence Grito is given from the central balcony every 15 September. On the ground floor the arches rest on columns of stone from Xaltocan carved in the Indigenous-influenced tequitqui manner, with zapote, capulín and marigold flowers, and the west arcade has a lobed, Mudéjar-looking arch.

Most visitors come for the murals of Desiderio Hernández Xochitiotzin, a Tlaxcalan painter of the second generation of Mexican muralism. He painted them in fresco from 1957 until 2001, when his health made him stop, and they cover more than 450 m² in 24 segments. The sequence starts along the ground-floor arcades, between the arches, with the Nahua migrations, the founding of the four lordships of Tepeticpac, Ocotelulco, Tizatlán and Quiahuiztlán, the god Camaxtli, the Ocotelulco market, the maguey and the warrior Tlahuicole's last fight. It moves on to the omens, the arrival of Cortés, Malintzin as interpreter, Xicohténcatl the Elder and Maxixcatzin, and the fall of Tenochtitlan. The main staircase holds "The Tlaxcalan Golden Century", begun in 1987, with the evangelisation and the Tlaxcalan settlement of the north in 1591, and at the top the section from Independence to the Porfiriato, started in 1990.

The staircase also has stone reliefs of the four lords of Tlaxcala. Upstairs are the Salón Rojo, where the cabinet meets, the Salón Verde with a 1972 bronze face of Benito Juárez, the Salón de Gobernadores with oil portraits of past governors, and the governor's office. In a small courtyard a plaque recalls that executions took place there during the conquest.