Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral

Mexico's great cathedral grew slowly on the north side of the Zócalo, on ground that had been the sacred precinct of Aztec Tenochtitlan. The first small church, built in the 1520s partly with stone from the destroyed temples, soon seemed unworthy of the capital of New Spain. Its replacement, planned by the Spanish architect Claudio de Arciniega after the cathedrals of Jaén and Valladolid, was begun in 1573 and finished only in 1813. Nearly two and a half centuries of building mean that the cathedral reads like a textbook of colonial architecture: Renaissance and Gothic vaults inside, Baroque portals, and towers and a dome completed in the Neoclassical spirit by José Damián Ortiz de Castro and then Manuel Tolsá.

The engineering problem was the lake bed underneath. Builders drove thousands of timber piles into the soft clay and oriented the church north–south rather than the usual east–west because of the ground conditions. It never stopped moving: by the late 20th century uneven sinking had put the cathedral on the World Monuments Fund's list of most endangered sites, and a long stabilisation programme in the 1990s was needed before it came off the list in 2000.

Inside, three works matter most. The Altar of Forgiveness, facing the main entrance, is by Jerónimo de Balbás and is the first use in the Americas of the estípite, the inverted-pyramid pilaster that became the signature of Mexican Churrigueresque. Behind the choir, at the far end of the nave, Balbás's Altar of the Kings (1718–1737) rises in carved and gilded cedar, the richest work in the building. Between them the choir holds two of the largest 18th-century organs in the Americas. Fourteen of the sixteen side chapels, each once sponsored by a guild, are open to visitors; a fire in 1967 damaged much of the interior, and the restoration uncovered paintings and documents that had long been hidden.

Next door, the Sagrario Metropolitano by Lorenzo Rodríguez (1749–1760) has a lavish Baroque façade of its own, and the excavated Templo Mayor lies a short walk away, so the two faces of the site's history can be seen within minutes of each other.

Getting there

The cathedral stands on the Zócalo in the historic centre of Mexico City, about 0.9 km from the city centre point. Metro Line 2 stops at Zócalo/Tenochtitlan, a walk of a few minutes from the doors. Mexico City International Airport (MEX) is about 7 km away.