Puebla’s Cathedral

Puebla's baroque-style cathedral is one of the largest in Mexico. It takes up a city block and is located in the centre of the historic area. On weekends a half hour laser show is projected on the face of the church, similar to the show on Guadalajara’s cathedral, starting at 7:30 pm.

In 1531, a decade after the Hernan Cortes conquest of the Aztecs, the Dominican bishop of the local diocese wanted to build a cathedral. In a dream, a flock of angels showed him a great spot for it and he set out to build his cathedral there. In fact her built a whole new city there too.

Legend says that the angels not only brought holy inspiration to the project, but the latest surveying techniques as well. It's said they used string lines to lay out a grid of streets accented by parks and fountains on all the surrounding blocks where the cathedral would be built.

But as things turned out, it took quite awhile, 44 years in fact, to wade through the red tape to get the green light to build the cathedral.

The actual construction took quite awhile, too. Finally, much of the cathedral's interior was completed and its two 200-foot-high towers were ready to welcome the masses.

One problem remained though. How would they get an 18,000-pound bell up to the top of one of the towers (the other tower is bell-less).

Sure enough, the angels showed up again and raised the bell.
As a way of saying thanks to their angelic helpers, the city was named Puebla de los Angeles ("City of the Angels"). In tribute to the angels, the Cathedral is surrounded by a wrought-iron fence featuring 58 bronze angel statues, each with raised arms.

The cathedral is huge. Rumour says, that the building engineers did a switch and used the original plans for the Mexico city cathedral to build Puebla’s cathedral and vice versa.

There are three organs in the cathedral but the two old ones are no longer in service since they stopped working at the end of the 19th century. They were never sent to be restored as the clergy wanted to preserve them as artistic relics or decorative jewels. The largest organ or International organ has a total of 3376 pipes or musical sounds. The largest tube measures 12 m and the smallest 1 cm and it is played on big occasions such as weddings, graduations, concerts, etc.

The cathedral is like a museum full of wonderful art pieces - paintings, sculptures, woodworking, etc. So much to see!Læs mere