The second city of the Viceroyalty, the land of Zaragoza, the beautiful and airy Puebla de los Ángeles, invites us all the time to continue discovering it and the astonishment seems to be persistent.
From that July 22, 1640, when one of the main actors in Puebla history, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, was anchored as the ninth bishop, until today, this central character of the 17th century continues as a protagonist, because he, as others bought his ticket to go down in history.
This unworthy bishop - as he himself described himself - died in 1659 far from Puebla, where he never returned, and since 1777 his earnest request to return his remains to "his Puebla de los Ángeles" continues to be paralyzed in the Vatican.
Palafox went down in history with a firm and forceful step, leaving us 36 temples, 150 altarpieces, schools, hospitals, parishes and portals, not to mention the lavish cathedral of this city, in addition to instituting a Nahuatl chair, writing constitutions and a literary legacy incomparable, a collection that he donated in 1646 to become the basis of what is now known as the Palafoxiana Library, which currently has 41,582 volumes and is the largest in all of America in terms of printed matter.
This typical property of New Spain's Baroque architecture shelters in three shelves of ayacahuite, coloyote and cedar, the most extraordinary of which can be found colonial prints from the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries with disciplines on law, history, hagiography, medicine , architecture and miscellanies about the colonial life of Independent Mexico, and although the museum maintains a momentary pause due to the ravages of the 1999 earthquake, the museum and research work is permanent and what is enriching about this corner of Puebla is that you can smell, feel and have it in your hands through a simple procedure. Thus, history can be closer than ever with literary jewels such as the Polyglot Bible, Ortelius's Atlas and the Nuremberg Chronicle, among other “jewels”; one can also enter the first exhibition resulting from this work called "Prohibited books, censorship and expurgation.
