Catedral Metropolitana de Xalapa

18th-century cathedral with a famously unfinished bell tower facing Parque Juárez

The cathedral dominates the south side of Parque Juárez, a heavy, slightly sober eighteenth-century building of yellow stone with a Neoclassical facade. It became a cathedral only in 1864 when Xalapa was made a diocese; before that it was the parish church of the colonial town.

The interior is large, calm, mostly Neoclassical, with a striking marble baldachin over the high altar. The unfinished south tower is the building's signature feature, the result of money running out in the 1770s. Open all day for visits when no Mass is in progress.

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Construction began in 1773 but ran out of money before the southern bell tower could be finished — and there it has stood, half-built, for more than two centuries. Locals call it the *torre chata* (the snub tower).

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