Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe
On the hill of Tepeyac, where the Virgin Mary appeared to Saint Juan Diego in December 1531, stands the most visited Catholic shrine in the world. Some twenty million pilgrims come each year, and millions arrive in the days around her feast on 12 December.
The old basilica, finished in 1709, began to sink into the soft ground. A new basilica was built beside it between 1974 and 1976 to a design by Pedro Ramírez Vázquez. It is a great round tent-like church that can hold ten thousand people, and all of them can see the image above the altar. The cloak of Juan Diego bearing the image hangs behind the altar, and a moving walkway beneath it lets pilgrims pass close.
The plaza between the two basilicas, the chapels on the hill, and the gardens where the roses bloomed make up a whole sacred town. Pope Saint John Paul II came here on his first foreign journey in 1979, and canonized Juan Diego here in 2002.
- Built
- 1974–1976 (new basilica); 1695–1709 (old basilica)
- Style
- Modern; Baroque (old basilica)
- Where
- Mexico City, Mexico
- Map
- Find it on OpenStreetMap
- Read about
- The Tilma of Guadalupe