Oaxaca - Walking Through Ancient Discoveries

Oaxaca is a beautiful Mexican city, colorful, cultural with lots of great food. But like so many cities in this county, there is a great deal of history, and I mean ancient history, to discover in Oaxaca. With a couple of great tour guides, we learned some of the history of the Oaxaca area.

We started our adventure at the Church of Santo Domingo Guzman, built by the Dominicans in the 16th century.

At the time the Spaniards came they wanted to convert the indigenous people to Catholicism. So they built huge churches like this one. Inside it is covered in gold. It is said there are over 100,000 gold leaves inside the church.

Everything was incredibly ornate inside the church.

School Tours

It was cute to see a group of school children on a field trip, getting a first hand look at some of the history of their country.

Adjacent to the church, sits what used to be a Dominican monastery. Today, it is a museum. We picked up a guide right outside of the museum who offered to take us through. The guides are licensed and wear their license on a lanyard. We agreed on a reasonable fee and went into the museum together. It was the best choice, as it turns out the museum was huge!

This courtyard or main cloister was a gathering place for the those living and serving here to gather.

Inside the monastery turned museum, is a library filled with ancient books. These are the books the Dominicans brought over from Spain in the 1500’s, as they tried to convert the indigenous people of the area. Today, there is a librarian that will let you look through the books wearing special gloves, and, very well monitored.

Every Detail Was Ornate

This is part of the original ceiling pattern restored. It was originally laden in gold.

Upstairs, the museum really begins with a very unique display of local art. In the late 1800’s, the ancient ruins called Monte Albán were discovered just a few miles outside of town. Monte Albán was where people lived for over 1,300 years, beginning 300BC! Then in 1930 a Mexican archaeologist discovered what is now called Tomb 7. Inside this tomb were thousands of artifacts, including carvings, statures and jewels. Over the next several decades, the artifacts were carefully restored, then placed in this museum.

One of the most famous artifacts is this mask. This is a “death mask” that was ladened in a turquoise mosaic pattern. What makes this a remarkable find is how intact it was almost 2,000 years later. This speaks to how overgrown the Monte Alban area had become in that it went un-noticed during population growth, and several wars.

The museum continued on with more ancient artifacts dating back to 500 BC. What made this room unusual is that it is a restored room of the original monastery. During the war, the Spanish put their cannons on the roofs of the monastery, where they ultimately collapsed. They were rebuilt as a part of the restoration of the building using brick. There is a mixture of old and new rooms throughout the building.

This is one of the artifacts from the Zapotec civilization discovered. It is said to have been carved somewhere between 500 to 700 BC.

Our guide Rafael

He was terrific. From Mexico City, where he was educated. He was very knowledgeable about all of the history and artifacts.

Here he is showing us some of the original, unrestored mural work on the wall. The art on the beams above has been restored as a contrast.

It was a beautiful day in Oaxaca, looking out at the front of the Church and into the gardens.

One story our guide told us, was that sometime in the 1800’s they found evidence of a tunnel between the monastery and the convent. He said that if we looked just down the street we could find the old convent. Well sure enough, the building on the right is a straight walk back to the church. We thought this had to be the convent so we investigated some more.

We went inside and found this beautiful gazebo type structure. It collected the rain, where the nuns then must have washed clothes. You can see the wash and rinse bins. There is still some water in it today.

Then it opened up to the most beautiful courtyard with a lovely pool. Turns out this old convent is now a 5-star hotel. It was beautiful, and there were plaques all over noting the history of the convent. But no where could we find any evidence of a tunnel. Guess we will always wonder if there any goings back and forth with the Dominican Fryers and the Nuns!

After learning so much while in the museum, we were now excited to visit the archeological spot of Monte Alban. There are busses and tour guides that will take you up there. We were not interested in a large tour and were too late to hire a private guide. So we just took a taxi for about 300 pesos to the site.

We bought our tickets for 70 pesos each. After entering, someone pointed out the onsite guides to hire. We were fortunate in our guide was incredibly knowledgeable. He also was an ancestor of the Zapotec people and spoke the language (as well as Spanish and English).

We had heard Monte Alban was huge, so we walked up a little hill with our guide to this first stop. This would have been a home. Note all the construction was done by hand. In the center of the home tomb, as the Zapotec people had a strong belief in the underworld, in that we all pass through it.

We next walked into a large area, where these structures would have been temples. We climbed to the top of the one on the right where we were able to get our first view of the whole site.

We hiked up the stairs and then finally got a view of the expansive site. Two things really struck us here; this was on top of a mountain, so everything had to be hauled up to build. There were no horses or donkeys to help. Also, how this all went undiscovered for over 1,000 years after the Zapotec abandoned the site.

The large inverted rectangle to the right was actually a reservoir. They relied on the rainy season to collect all of their water for the whole year.

The Ball Courts

In every ancient site we’ve seen there are always ball courts. The story varies from place to place if actual balls were used, or if the sport had more deadly endings.

After about 2 hours total our time with our guide was over. Our guide Van was fantastic! In fact, we recognized him from a YouTube video where he was giving another tour. Se we felt very fortunate to have spent this morning with Van learning more about the beautiful culture and history of Oaxaca and Monte Alban.

We would highly recommend if you take a trip to Oaxaca, to make time to visit the Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán, the museum and then Monte Alban.

If you’d like to see the rest of our visit in Oaxaca, just click: HERE