The San Nicolás Tolentino Chapel in the Taxco Alarcon city, Guerrero and implications of the pre-hispanic cosmovisión in its location

Abstract

This work consists of a historical and architectural investigation of the church of San Nicolás Tolentino of the city of Taxco de Alarcón state of Guerrero, whose objective was to discover the historical and symbolic content of such a humble monument. It is one of the many churches built by the first evangelizers of the region: the mendicant friars of the order of San Francisco, they arrived in Cuernavaca in 1525. The same, following the rules of poverty observed for almost three hundred years, they made it from a single nave, with walls of stone masonry seated with mud, in the prehispanic way and with roof of palm to two waters. And despite its marked simplicity, it seems to be a true "palimpsest", where you can clearly read, among other things, three adaptations that through its history were carried out: The first whose factory was in charge by the parents Franciscans in the sixteenth century, the second corresponding to the eighteenth century, and the third to the second half of the nineteenth century. In another sense, it can be said that, the geometric arrangement of the architectural plan of the building, obeyed the canons of proportionality and symbolism of the first churches of Christianity. Not so its location and orientation, since these characteristics do not seem to correspond to the European own traditions, but rather, to a typical context of the "Pre-Hispanic Ritual Landscape". Therefore, it is desirable that knowledge of the attributes of the church of San Nicolás Tolentino brought to light, help to justify their permanence in an increasingly changing urban environment.