Description

San Angel was a village of orchards and summer houses south of Mexico City, built around the Carmelite convent whose garden and crypts still draw visitors. Francisco Fernandez del Castillo, an archivist of unusual patience, wrote its history from the deeds: the Dominican foundation at Tenanitla, the water rights that made the mills possible, the families who built the houses along the Calle de la Amargura. He published in 1913, between the fall of Madero and the worst of the fighting. The engravings he had made — listed at the back — show a place that the city has since absorbed entirely.