San Pedro Cholula
San Pedro Cholula is located 8 km (4.97 miles) west of the city of Puebla, at 2,146.00 meters (7,040.68 feet) height over sea level. It faces the beautiful landscape of the perpetually snowed volcanoes: Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl. It was founded in the year 500 b.C.“Cholula” has been translated from the Nahuatl language as “water falling in the runaway site”. This is related with the arrival at the valley of Toltec groups drove out of Tula around the year 1000 a.C. Indeed, it was the Toltecs who established here the greatest ceremonial center in the Anahuac, turning Cholula into the “sacred city”.
One of the landmarks of the city is the Grand Pyramid, crowned by the sanctuary consecrated to the Our Lady Virgen de los Remedios.
During the conquest this sanctuary became the superposition symbol of the Catholic Church over the greatest Pyramid in the indigenous world, consecrated until that time, to God Quetzalcoatl.
The Grand Pyramid we see today as a natural hill, offers a sight of an important 62.00 meters (203.42 feet) height adobe–mass, which by the measurements of its base, approximately 400 meters (1,312.34 feet) on each side, it is considered the largest one in the world in total volume
The Pyramid has been explored through tunnels, allowing the discovery of several constructions superimposed. As in other places in Mexico, each new culture covered the former one. This is how we come to find different architecture styles in Cholula, which form the Pyramid of superimposed stories with different features, among which one may appreciate the Olmec and the Teotihuacan architectures.
The city has also beautiful samples of the Colonial architecture and the largest main square in Mexico, second only to Mexico City's.
A monumental complex encircles this huge plaza formed by Saint Gabriel Church and Convent, the Church of the Third Order, the Royal Chapel with its chapels, its atriums and the Franciscan Library Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, the Saint Peter Parrish, the "Casa del Caballero Aguila" (House of the Eagle Lord) Museum and the Guerrero Arcades.
It has been said that Cholula has 365 churches, according a legend arisen during the conquest. The city was then called "the Rome of the Anahuac" because when gazed from a mosque, it seemed as full of towers and temples, as there are days in a year.
The Saint Gabriel Convent was built where there was once the Temple to God Quetzalcoatl.
The Royal Chapel in its original Arabic mosque style was originally established to indoctrinate the Indians. Today it features 7 naves already closed and it is decorated with 49 domes. Cholula has been a steadily occupied settlement with since the V Century b.C. That is why we can assert that Cholula is the oldest living city in America.
