Exploring Colonial Mexico©
Exploring Colonial Mexico©
LAGOS DE MORENOSet beside the San Juan river in the Los Altos region of northeastern Jalisco, the provincial town of Lagos de Moreno is home to one of the most spectacular late baroque churches in Mexico.
In colonial times the town prospered as a way station on the rich silver route to Zacatecas, and was known as the "Athens of the Bajio" for its fine mansions and cultural pretensions.
The Cathedral
The grand church of The Assumption, known to residents simply as the "Cathedral," was built in the late 1700s to house the shrine of San Hermion (Hermes), an obscure early Christian martyr whose purported relics were brought here from Rome.
Set on a rise, the site of a former mission and earlier, a pre-hispanic temple, the Cathedral dominates the main plaza, its soaring twin towers visible for miles from the surrounding plain.
Reputedly designed by Francisco Bruno de Ureña, the eminent Bajío architect and younger member of the celebrated Ureña family *, its flamboyant "Churrigueresque" facade is richly carved with ornate architectural sculpture, replete with statuary, decorative niches and rococo flourishes - all fashioned from pink marble! Each tower rises like a wedding cake, its diminishing tiers encrusted with massed columns and projecting cornices.
The side doorways are similarly elaborate, and feature busts of popular saints like St. Barbara and John the Baptist.
For some, the cathedral at Lagos de Moreno may present the very picture of late baroque excess, but to the open-minded viewer, it has great charm and undeniable presence - an outstanding Spanish architectural monument of its time, soon to be overtaken by a wave of neoclassic puritanism.
* Felipe de Ureña
Known as El maestro transhumante, the "peripatetic master", Felipe de Ureña was the most influential of the Mexican born architect /designers to introduce and expand the Churrigueresque style into New Spain. During the second half of the 18th century, together with family members, he was primarily responsible for the spread and subsequent evolution of this ornate late baroque style into cities across Mexico, especially along the silver routes north of Mexico City.
Primarily an innovative designer and fabricator of altarpieces, he later adapted the barroco estípite style as it was called, for church facades. His elegant and distinctive designs are recognized and known as the felipense style.
For more on the colonial buildings of Jalisco and the Bajío, consult Blue Lakes & Silver Cities, our guide to West Mexico * for other pages on the Ureña family consult our archive