Cripta del Padre Kino

The open-air mausoleum on the Plaza Monumental holds the skeleton of Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino, the Tyrolean-born Jesuit missionary who founded more than twenty missions across the Pimería Alta — what is now northern Sonora and southern Arizona — between 1687 and his death here in 1711. The remains lie under glass; visitors can walk right up.

The crypt is the heart of a planned square that anchors the whole town. The plaza is open day and night; entry is free. The bronze statue of Kino on horseback at the south end of the square is by the sculptor Julián Martínez and shows the missionary leading a packtrain, as he did across thousands of miles of desert. For believers, this is a pilgrimage site; for everyone else, it is one of the most interesting small-town plazas in Mexico.

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A story
Padre Eusebio Kino died in Magdalena on 15 March 1711 while consecrating a chapel to St Francis Xavier. His grave was lost for two and a half centuries. An archaeological team, led by Mexico's Jorge Olvera and the United States historian Charles Polzer, located the skeleton in 1966 under the floor of a vanished chapel. Mexico, the United States, and the Vatican together funded the construction of the present mausoleum, which opened in 1971.