The Basílica de Guadalupe is the most venerated shrine in the whole of Mexico.
Hundreds of thousands of people come from all over the country to celebrate the feast of La Virgen de Guadalupe, on 12 December. It was here, in 1531, that the Virgin appeared three times in the guise of an indigenous princess to local campesino Juan Diego and imprinted her portrait on his cloak. The cloak is preserved, set in gold, but was moved into the new basilica next door as a massive crack had appeared down the side of the old building. The huge, modern basilica, completed in 1976, was designed by architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez (who was also responsible for the Museo Nacional de Antropología). It’s an impressive building and holds over 20,000 people (very crowded on Sunday) and an estimated 20 million pilgrims visit the shrine every year. The original basilica has been converted into a museum. It still houses the original magnificent altar, but otherwise mostly representations of the image on the cloak, plus interesting painted tin plates offering votive thanks for cures, etc from about 1860. A chapel stands over the well that gushed at the spot where the Virgin appeared. Indigenous dance groups provide entertainment in front of the basilica. There are, in fact, about seven churches in the immediate neighbourhood, including one on the hill above, the Iglesia del Cerrito (which has excellent views over the city); most of them are at crazy angles to each other and to the ground, because of subsidence. The Templo de los Capuchinos has been the subject of a remarkable feat of engineering in which one end has been raised 3.4 m so that the building is now horizontal.
