AWESOME ARCHITECTURE

 Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about

Colonial Mexican Period

The Cathedral of Mérida, Yucatán is an example of Renaissance style.

With the establishment of Spanish rule in Mexico, the first churches and monasteries were built utilizing architectural principles of classical order and the Arabic formalities of Spanish mudéjarismo. Great cathedrals and civic buildings were later built in the Baroque and Mannerist styles, while in rural areas estate manor houses and hacienda buildings incorporated Mozarabic elements. 

The syncretic Indian-Christian mode of architecture developed organically as Indians interpreted European architectural and decorative features in the native, pre-Columbian style called tequitqui ("laborer" or "mason", from Nahuatl).

Organizing local indigenous communities around monastic centers was one of the solutions devised by friars of the mendicant orders in the 16th century to convert the large number of indigenous non-Catholics in New Spain. These were conceived of as fortresses, but based architecturally on the European conventual model, incorporating new features such as the open chapel and atriums with a stone cross at the center; they were characterized by different decorative elements.

Early in the history of the Indian reductions (reducciones de indios), the convents became community training centers, so to speak, where the Indians could learn various arts and trades as well as European social customs and the Spanish language, obtain medical treatment, and even hold funerals. These buildings, spread across the central part of what is now Mexico, contain superb examples of the indigenous mastery of architecture and the sculptural arts. 

Their work, created under the supervision of the Catholic friars, was done in the tequitqui style, which originated in the architectural stone carving and decorative painting practiced by their ancestors before the Spanish conquest.

The first cathedrals in Mexico were built beginning in 1521 when New Spain was established; from that time onward ever more elaborate structures were built, a prime example being the Mérida Cathedral in Yucatán, built in the Renaissance architectural style and one of the oldest cathedrals in the New World.

and as always have a chilled day from the Viking