Ex Convento de San Juan Bautista, Yecapixtla

Augustinian friars built the Ex Convento de San Juan Bautista in Yecapixtla between 1535 and 1541, making it one of the earliest monasteries completed in Morelos and among the fourteen Popocatépetl-slope sites jointly inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The church facade is distinguished by a rare Isabelline Gothic rose window above the main entrance, a decorative style more commonly associated with late-15th-century Spanish architecture and unusual in New World monastic construction, suggesting the involvement of a master mason trained in that tradition. The complex retains its original single-nave church, open atrium, and a cloister with two levels of arcades, along with sections of early fresco decoration depicting Augustinian saints. Because Yecapixtla escaped much of the later remodeling that altered other regional monasteries, architectural historians regard it as among the best-preserved examples of the Popocatépetl route's original 16th-century design, retaining its fortress-like massing and largely unaltered facade proportions. The monastery's atrium cross and posa chapels, used for outdoor preaching during the early evangelization period, remain intact at each corner of the atrium. INAH oversees ongoing conservation of the rose window's stone tracery and the facade's weathered volcanic-stone surface, both vulnerable to the region's seismic activity.