The Dominican convent was built in the mid-16th century, shortly after the Spanish established control over the region. It is one of the early colonial religious complexes in Morelos, part of a wave of monastery building that the mendicant orders — Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians — undertook across central Mexico in the decades after the conquest. The cloister and chapel have survived earthquakes, sieges, and the anticlerical legislation that converted many such buildings to secular use.
It is not the most dramatic colonial convent in Mexico, and Cuautla is honest enough not to pretend otherwise. But it is a genuine 16th-century structure in reasonable condition, and worth half an hour in the course of walking the historic center. The contrast with the revolutionary monuments around it — the convent representing colonial authority, the monuments celebrating those who fought against its later incarnations — is quietly interesting.