Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe

The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Spanish: Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe) is a Roman Catholic church, basilica, and National shrine of Mexico, officially called Insigne y Nacional Basilica de Santa María de Guadalupe, is a sanctuary of the Catholic Church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary in her invocation of Guadalupe, located at the foot of Cerro del Tepeyac, Mexico City. It is the most visited Marian enclosure in the world, surpassed only by the Basilica of Saint Peter. Although the figures cited are not uniform, annually about twenty million pilgrims visit the sanctuary, of which about nine million do so on the days close to December 12, the day when Santa María de Guadalupe is celebrated. Annually, the Basilica of Santa María de Guadalupe has at least twice as many visitors as the more well-known Marian shrines, which is why it constitutes an outstanding social and cultural phenomenon. The temple known as the Antigua Basilica de Guadalupe was built by the architect Pedro de Arrieta, in the North of Mexico City near the hill of Tepeyac, where the Virgin Mary is believed to have appeared to Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, beginning its construction in March 1695. On May 1, 1709 it opened its doors, with a solemn novena. In 1749 it received the title of collegiate church, that is, without being a cathedral, it had its own chapter and had an abbot. Its façade is free and simulates a screen, the four octagonal towers at its corners (crowned with mosaics or tiles of the type called yellow talavera with blue border, the same as the dome of the transept) have a meaning associated with the New Jerusalem, the Jerusalem of gold, mentioned in the Apocalypse.