Where to Stay in Cholula, Estado de Puebla

What is Cholula known for?

The Great Pyramid of Cholula is the largest pyramid on a platform anywhere, a mound so wide that the Spanish covered it with earth and set a church on the summit instead of pulling it down. That church is the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios. Churches are the other count.

San Pedro Cholula has the Saint Peter Apostol Church, and Santa María Tonantzintla stands among the many others that give the district its name for church building. Settlement here goes back to around 500 BC, which puts Cholula among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in North America.

What are the main landmarks in Cholula?

The Great Pyramid of Cholula is the largest pyramid on a platform in the world, and the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios sits on the summit where the Spanish put it. Two museums explain it. The Museo Regional de Cholula and the Museo de Historia y Antropología de Cholula both hold the record of the site.

The list runs on from there. Santa María Tonantzintla, the Saint Peter Apostol Church in San Pedro Cholula, and the Casa del Caballero Águila round out what the town keeps.

What is the history of Cholula?

Settlement began around 500 BC. That date makes Cholula one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in North America, a place lived in without a break from long before the Spanish arrived. The pyramid came out of that long occupation.

Width, not height, carries its size, and the mound became the largest pyramid on a platform in the world, which is why it reads as a hill from a distance. The Spanish changed the surface, not the shape. They covered the pyramid with earth and imposed a church on its top, and the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios has stood there since, a sanctuary on an older platform.

Church building did not stop there. Santa María Tonantzintla and the Saint Peter Apostol Church in San Pedro Cholula belong to the same long programme, which left the district with more churches than a town of this size would normally hold. Puebla grew alongside.

Cholula now sits within the metropolitan area of that city, fifteen kilometres from its centre, which has tied a very old town to a modern conurbation without erasing what stands in it. Its history is kept in two museums. The Museo Regional de Cholula and the Museo de Historia y Antropología de Cholula set out what is known of the site, and the Casa del Caballero Águila stands among the older buildings the town has kept.

Where is Cholula?

Cholula lies fifteen kilometres west of the city of Puebla. The town spreads over a broad plain in Puebla state, and the Great Pyramid of Cholula is the one relief that stands out from it, a wide earth mound rather than a natural hill. The district is wide.

Its ground takes in the church villages around the town, Santa María Tonantzintla among them, and runs on toward the built-up edge of the Puebla metropolitan area.

What is the climate of Cholula?

The Puebla plain sets the pattern. Days run warm through most of the year, and the wet months arrive in summer, when rain comes over the valley and the dry season takes the rest. Winters stay dry.

Tropical air reaches this part of Puebla without the coastal damp, so the air over Cholula is warm rather than heavy.

How do you get to Cholula?

Puebla is the way in. The road east runs fifteen kilometres to the city, and most arrivals come through it, since Cholula belongs to the same metropolitan area rather than standing on its own. Walking covers the rest.

The Great Pyramid of Cholula, the Museo Regional de Cholula, and the Saint Peter Apostol Church in San Pedro Cholula stand close enough together that the town is covered on foot.