Why go
The monastery makes the surrounding woodland easier to read as a lived landscape. Small cells, narrow corridors and separate hermitages reflect a life organized around withdrawal, while the forest’s springs explain why later governments also valued this part of the Sierra de las Cruces.
The full story
Carmelite monks used the word desert for a place of retreat. At Desierto de los Leones, that retreat stood among pines, oyamel firs and oaks, at elevations that brought cold and damp conditions. The first monastery was built between 1606 and 1611 by Friar Andrés de San Miguel. The complex used small rooms, known as cells, for sleeping and study. Separate hermitages extended the idea of seclusion beyond the main building, each with modest spaces for prayer and daily needs. These details explain the relationship between the religious architecture and its wooded setting. An eighteenth-century monastery replaced the deteriorated original. The monks moved to Tenancingo in 1801, but the forest acquired a different public importance. It became a reserve in 1876 to help conserve springs supplying Mexico City, followed by national park designation in 1917. Religious retreat and water conservation thus form distinct chapters of the same landscape.