Mexico/Puebla: Cholula – Church of Santa Maria Tonantzintla
This church in Cholula is absolutely amazing, as if taken from the pages of Alice in Wonderland or some other fairytale. From the outside, it looks like a gingerbread house with colorful tiles and figurines, but the inside is absolutely insane – layers and layers of stucco of statues and faces everywhere. Ornate plaster molding of faces, figures, masks, flowers, fruits, and birds painted in bright, vibrant colors covers every last inch of the church’s interior walls and ceilings and hundreds of eyes or various Indian-looking angels and saints are looking at you. The style is known as indigenous baroque – local Amerindian influenced motives. The church was built in the 17th century and then decorated over the next 200 years, originally it was meant to be an indigenous version of the Chapel of Rosario in Puebla. Unfortunately, absolutely no photography was allowed inside
