This is one of the grandest colonial plazas in the Americas, surrounded by arched portals and beautiful colonial houses.
It is a curious thing that in the plazas of this epoch –and it only happens here in Pátzcuaro that there are no churches on the plaza, only individual homes and buildings around the circumference. This arrangement is due to the fact that the “downtown” (as we’ll call it) in prehispanic times was used for dwellings and shops, leaving the “uphill” areas for ceremonial and ritual sites. As in other cities constructed on top of prehispanic sites, the churches that exist now were built on top of the old ceremonial sites.
The main plaza also contains three fountains; the central one includes a statue of the illustrious person for whom the plaza is named.