The Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel is San Miguel's defining image — the pink neo-Gothic towers that rise above El Jardín and appear in every photograph of the city. The original church was built in the 17th century; the extraordinary facade was added in stages beginning in the 1880s, the work of a self-taught indigenous stonemason who transformed a colonial church into something that looks like a dream of Gothic Europe reconceived in rose-coloured stone.
The interior is more conventionally colonial Mexican than the exterior suggests: gilded altars, painted saints, and the constant presence of worshippers and pilgrims. The church is a working parish, not a museum, and mass is held regularly. The best way to experience the Parroquia is from the tables on El Jardín at sunset, when the facade turns deep pink in the last light and the city's evening social life gets underway around the main square.