Martha and I went to Tlaxcala for a day and finally had a chance to see the murals in the Palacio de Gobierno (the Government Palace). As I hope you’ll see in the photographs below, they’re amazing.
The Palacio is also pretty amazing. It was built in 1545 and was the residence of Hernán Cortés. Unfortunately, I neglected to take a photograph of the building. Mea culpa. But I did take a bunch (with my cell phone) of the murals.
The murals cover 450 square meters (almost 5,000 square feet), tracing the history of Tlaxcala from prehispanic through modern times. Desiderio Hernández Xochitiotzin, a famous Tlaxcalan muralist, started the murals in 1957.
It took him ten years to complete the first series of murals, located on the building’s first floor. These murals depict the history of the Tlaxcalans, their rituals and their wars (of which there were a multitude).
During 1967 and 1968, Xochitiotzin completed the murals located along the first part of the staircase; these show the Conquest and colonial period. The rest of the murals along the staircase walls follow Tlaxcala’s history through modern times. The murals are currently being cleaned and repainted.
Here are the murals on the first floor:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Gringo Chicuarote to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.