Everyone in the family agreed that the two absolute favorite things we did were visit the Biblioteca Palafoxiana (read more in English here) and the tunnels at the piramide in Cholula, read about the pyramid here (Cholula is actually a different town & dates from c. 500BCE but whatevs and further actually there are *two* Cholulas! right next to each other San Andres Cholula and San Pedro Cholula! because history).
First, fotos from the Biblioteca Palafoxiana, perhaps the oldest public library in the Americas. Whether or not it qualifies for that oldest title, it is a stunner. A single, long room with soaring white ceiling and wood carved three stories of bookcases and talavera tile floors, it pretty much takes your breath away with both the light and weight of history. Founded in 1646 when the Bishop Palafox y Mendoza donated his books with the understanding that the books be in a specifically public library, the actual structure was not completed until over a century later in 1773.
From Palafox's words regarding books and a library, rendered in, what else? this IS Puebla, afterall!, azulejos (tiles).
I can't really stress enough how light-filled the library is. In fact, this made it simulatenously easier to photograph (no need for a tripod which I don't have with me and isn't allowed anyway) and difficult (too much light is its own challenge! Shadows! Glare! Flare!) The light comes both from breaks in the bookcases along one wall as well as windows high above the three levels of bookcases.
As implied, the other long wall of the library is a more or less unbroken wall of books and bookshelves-- gorgeous!!!
Not to be left behind, the floor is a beautiful - if hard! good thing you sit to read books! - combination of red clay tiles and talavera tiles, most often in blue and white but every once in awhile a tile with more colors shows up,
Mostly I'm including the below foto because it reminds me of Fatima and I miss her! The tables in the middle of the library have on them various period pieces, like globes and other whatnot thingys. Technical term.
A couple of fotos of perhaps my most favorite part of the library- the corners and edges where the wooden bookcases and railings and banisters curve around. Be still mi corazon!
In the 2nd foto you can also see the stairs to the third level of books. It was unclear to us how you go from first level to the second as there were no visible stairs- we speculated that there may be stairs behind a couple of closed doors.
Did you know there is a pyramid in Cholula?! And that moreover it is considered to be the *largest* pyramid in the world?! Click here to see a cool graphic on the relative sizes of the Great Pyramid of Cholula (Gran Píramide de Cholula) and other pyramids and pyramid-like buildings. We certainly did not know (okay, honestly all we knew about Cholula is that there is a hot sauce that we really like- it's Daniela's favorite of the commercially available hot sauces). Not that many people know about this pyramid because it is covered- basically you can see very little of the actual pyramid itself so it isn't obviously a pyramid. In fact, when the Spaniards came and conquered, they thought it was just a hill and they stuck a church on top and built part of the camino real through one side of it. Ahhhh, colonization... There is quite a lot that is not known about the pirámide, known as Tlachihualtepetl in Nahuatl-- exactly when it was built as a temple, for example, or why it was covered over (intentional? neglect as traditions changed?) but by tradition is thought to have been dedicated to Quetzalcoatl. In the 1930s archeologists started to excavate and over time they built 8km of tunnels through the tunnels. Despite work in the 1930s and 1950s, this is a relatively unstudied archeological site.
We knew there were tunnels and that you can go in them, but we had no idea what it was going to be like. It was amazing! And a little terrifying! My fotos aren't great- you can see better ones and read about the tunnels more at this article.
Here's Thalia heading in, at this point we had no idea what this was gonna be like or how long it was gonna be. Otherwise, one of us would never have done it! Thalia was utterly entranced though which helped and I had to force myself not to think about how much pyramid and earth and church was above and all around us and let wonder take over.
Tunnels like this went on and on and on! There are many side-branches that are closed off as well.
Sometimes there are side-branches that you can briefly climb and sometimes you can see parts of the actual pirámide building materials and structure.
An example of a side branch tunnel that goes up and up and up. There were also side branch tunnels that went down and down and down but I didn't manage to get a good foto of them partly because it's a little frightening to look that far *down*
Overall, this was quite an experience! I've been down into various tombs but never inside a pyramid; I'm not sure that one can even do this anywhere else these days?
It's not all that easy to take a foto of what the pirámide looks like from the outside, but here are a couple of attempts---
Here you can see the top parts of the pirámide, with the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios on top (she has the the saint's day that just! happen!s to be the same day as the festival of Chiconauhquiauhit, the goddess sacred to the pirámide when the Spanish conquered the area, today the church is a site of Catholic pilgrimage but the pirámide is now also the site of a Quetzalcoatl-based ritual & celebration, held on the spring equinox,
A foto of me and Thalia, pausing on our way up to the top of the pirámide, wearing our coordinating Nahua-artisan-woven huipil quexquemetl from Hueyapan in the Sierra Norte of Puebla,
Thalia posing with the view from an overlook on the top of the pirámide, gives you a sense of how high one is, and how far one can see,
Wow, far out!!!
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