| Atotonilco´s Sanctuary |
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 Only 15 minutes from San Miguel de Allende by the highway to Dolores
Hidalgo, is the Sanctuary of Atotonilco, famous for it history and a
complicated architectonic structure with magnificient decoration, sumptuous reliefs, sculptures, numerous
paintings, but specially for its murals of the XVIII and XIX centuries , that make it an exceptional work of the novohispanic baroque.
The sanctuary was constructed in the time of Luis Felipe
Neri de Alfaro (1709-1776) near the thermal water springs where
“idolatries and abominations” were made and dedicated to
Jesus Nazareno. The first stone was placed the 3 of May of 1740,
beginning the construction of a modest church with five sections covered with vaults and a choir
on the entrance. Next to it a
house was constructed to lodge the devotee ones that
temporarily retired to make the spiritual exercises of San Ignacio de
Loyola, with wide rooms distributed around several patios
with runners in his four sides.
The well-known chapel “dressing room of the Holy Apostles” was
built in the back of the apse, with a circular structure covered with a
half orange cupola. Gradually they added other
chapels to the sanctuary that made it a complicated architectonic
structure.
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