Cuernavaca Cathedral

The Cathedral of the Assumption in Cuernavaca is one of the oldest Christian churches in the Americas, founded in 1529 by Franciscan missionaries who arrived in Mexico just eight years after the conquest. The building has the fortified appearance common to early colonial churches — thick walls, battlements, and narrow windows — because the Spanish needed structures that could serve as refuges as well as places of worship.

The atrium in front is enormous, designed to accommodate the mass conversions of indigenous people conducted in the open air. Inside, frescoes depicting the martyrdom of Japanese Christians, painted by indigenous artists using pre-Columbian techniques and discovered beneath whitewash in 1957, are one of the most remarkable pieces of early colonial art in Mexico. The cathedral complex also includes the Capilla Abierta and the Chapel of the Third Order.

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A story
During restoration work in 1957, workers uncovered frescoes of extraordinary rarity beneath layers of whitewash. Painted by indigenous artists in the 16th century, the images depict the martyrdom of 26 Christian missionaries in Japan in 1597 — executed by crucifixion on the orders of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The fact that Japanese converts appear in a Mexican church fresco painted within decades of the martyrdom, using pre-Columbian pictorial techniques, is a testament to how fast and strange the early colonial world had become.