Ixtacamaxtitlan

Ixtacamaxtitlán was an Indigenous lordship in the highlands of present-day Puebla, close to Tlaxcala. In 1519 its ruler, Temamascuicuil, occupied a seat on the mountain called Acolhua. When Hernán Cortés arrived from Cempoala on his way toward Tlaxcala, the ruler received him and his men for three days, providing lodging and gifts. The encounter placed this highland polity directly on the expedition's inland route.

Christian institutions followed the conquest. The Franciscans undertook evangelization in this part of the mountains after 1521, and San Francisco de Asís became the central religious complex of the town. Its buildings preserve a long sequence of construction: the national monuments catalogue assigns the complex a sixteenth-century origin with interventions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The town's history therefore includes both the lordship encountered by the expedition and the gradual creation of a Franciscan religious centre.