HOSPICIO CABAÑAS

Behind the long pool/fountain at the east end of Plaza Tapatía stands the domed neoclassic Hospicio Cabañas, the largest and one of the most remarkable colonial buildings in the Americas, designed and financed by Bishop Juan Ruiz de Cabañas; construction was complete in 1810. The purpose of the “Guadalajara House of Charity and Mercy,” as the good bishop originally named it, a home for the sick, helpless, and homeless, was fulfilled for 170 years. Although still successfully serving as an orphanage during the 1970s, time had taken its toll on the Hospicio Cabañas. The city and state governments built a new orphanage in the suburbs, restored the old building, and changed its purpose. It now houses the Instituto Cultural Cabañas, a center for the arts, at Cabañas 8, tel. 33/3818-2800, ext, 31016; open Tues.–Sat. 10:15 a.m.–5:45 p.m., Sun. 10:15 a.m.–3 p.m. Public programs include classes, films, and instrumental, chorale, and dance concerts.

Seemingly endless ranks of corridors pass a host of sculpture-decorated patios. Practice rooms resound with the clatter of dancing feet and the halting strains of apprentice violins, horns, and pianos. Exhibition halls and studios of the José Clemente Orozco Art Museum occupy a large fraction of the rooms, while the great muralist’s brooding work spreads over a corresponding fraction of the walls. Words such as dark, fiery, nihilistic, even apocalyptic, would not be too strong to describe the panoramas that Orozco executed (1938–1939) in the soaring chapel beneath the central dome. On one wall, an Aztec goddess wears a necklace of human hearts; on another, armored automaton-soldiers menace Indian captives; while in the cupola overhead, Orozco’s Man of Fire, wreathed in flame, appears to soar into a hellishly red-hot sky.