Mexico/Queretaro: Landa de Matamoros
About 20km further into the mountains lies another small town with the spectacular Franciscan mission – San Francisco del Valle de Tilaco in the town of Landa de Matamoros. It was built between 1754 and 1762. This church is the best preserved and the most elaborate of the five missions and has the most detailed and unique ornamentation on its facade. Plenty of figures and stucco of saints and angels and local plants and even mermaids with Indian features – whatever it took to lure and evangelize the local mountain tribes back in the dark 18th century.
