Mexico: Santiago de Queretaro (December 2022)
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Santiago de Queretaro (also known as Queretaro)
is the capital of the Mexican state of Queretaro. It is a big industrial city
with sprawling suburbs, but it boasts a beautiful, colonial center with
bustling squares, quieter side streets, and numerous points of interest,
including a large collection of Baroque churches. This page shows some pictures
I took during my short stay in Queretaro in December 2022, less than two weeks
before Christmas. Click here
for photos of Santiago de Queretaro I took on a previous trip in 2007.
Street vendors in
the old city center.
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Colorful toy
shop near the aqueduct.
Birds for
sale in Mercado La Cruz.
Figurines,
most of religious inspiration, for sale in Mercado La Cruz.
Old man playing violon in the evening on
Calle 16 de Septiembre, near the Monumento a la Corregidora.
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Typical street food, here at night on the
large plaza in front of the Templo de la Santa Cruz.
In quiet streets that crisscross the old
city center.
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Regional ceremonial masks (seen in the
Centro de las Artes de Queretaro and the Museo Regional de Queretaro).
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Statues and
doorknocker representing local Indians (probably Otomies-Chichimeca, who form
the largest indigenous group in the region around Queretaro).
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Statues of
women playing musical instruments.
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Bronze
statues of old persons, located outside the Templo de Santa Clara (left) and
the Templo de Capuchinas (center and right).
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Reconstitution
of an upper-class colonial interior with recovered furniture and decoration, in
La Casa de la Zacatecana (an actual 18th-century mansion).
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The aqueduct
that used to bring water of the old city. Completed in 1735, it consists of 74
arches over a length of 1280 meters, with an average height of 28.5 meters.
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Templo and
Convento de la Santa Cruz built between 1649 and 1654:
- Main facade.
- Fountain in
a courtyard of the convent.
- Left: Place
inside the convent where the aqueduct ended and brought its water. Right:
Former kitchen of the convent, which was supplied directly by water from the
aqueduct.
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Facade of the
Catedral de San Felipe Neri (completed in 1805). It is an unusual combination
of pink bricks and tall gray-stone Corinthian columns.
The massive,
unusually shaped flying buttresses of the Templo de Santa Rosa de Viterbo (18th
century).
Templo and
Convento de Santa Clara (17th century):
- Ceiling
painting above the choir of the church.
- Left:
Exuberantly decorated Baroque retable in the church. Right: Portion of another
retable.
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- Mummified remains of a woman exhumed from the crypt under the Convento
de Santa Clara. (These remains are currently kept in the Museo
Regional de Queretaro in the former Convento de San Francisco.)
Left: Inside
the Templo de la Merced (19th century). Right: In the Parroquia de Santiago
Apostol (built in the 17th century by the Jesuits).
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In the
cloister of the former Convento de San Augustin (built between 1731 and 1748).
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In the cloister of the former Convento de San Francisco (17th century),
adjacent to the Templo de San Francisco. The former
Convento de San Francisco now hosts the Museo Regional de Queretaro.
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Interior of
the Templo de San Francisco (17th century).
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