Basilica of Guadalupe

According to Catholic tradition, the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe was miraculously imprinted on the cloak, or tilma, of Juan Diego in 1531; scholars describe the surviving cloth as a painting from the colonial period. Around the image grew a sanctuary that draws around 20 million pilgrims a year, some nine million of them around the feast day on 12 December.

The Old Basilica, designed by Pedro de Arrieta, opened in 1709. Because the ground beneath it was sinking, a new church was built beside it and completed in 1976 by a team of architects including Pedro Ramírez Vázquez. The round New Basilica rests on 344 control piles and holds 10,000 worshippers. A moving walkway below the altar carries visitors past the image so that everyone can see it up close.

The sanctuary is a whole complex of buildings: the Old Basilica, now the Templo Expiatorio a Cristo Rey, the Capuchin convent, the Capilla del Pocito and a museum with nearly 4,000 works of colonial art.