Casa de Alfeñique ("The Candy House")
An amazing present to fulfill a loved one's wish.
4 Norte and 6 Oriente

The story goes that around 1790, the master blacksmith Don Juan Ignacio Morales asked the architect Antonio Santamaría Incháurregui to build a house to be the present he had promised to his wife: a house made of ... candy!

And so the architect set about the task of building a beautiful three-storey home whose facade combined brick and talavera, and decorating it from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling with intricate plaster decorations that made it look like a very popular candy of that time made from almonds: "Alfeñique".

On the first floor there were "accesorias", that is to say spaces fronting the street to be rented out to all kinds of businesses.

It wasn't until 1926 that the building was renovated and opened as a "Regional Museum". Today the Museo Regional Casa de Alfeñique ("The Candy House Regional Museum") offers vistors a large collection of objects related to the Battle of Puebla ("cinco de mayo"), as well as pieces about the history of Puebla, a large collection of paintings and everyday objects from the past that let us feel what life was like in such luxurious homes. On the third floor you can still visit the rooms lived in by the owners of the house, as well as the magnificent Puebla-style kitchen with its traditional stove, its oven for baking bread and its wonderful decoration where talavera tiles and terracotta blend to adorn this unique domestic space. To end the tour, the house chapel displays delicate decoration in gilt plaster. On its walls hang great paintings that frame the gilt 18th century altarpiece. Its facade is so completely festooned with decorative motifs that it even includes such things as the monograms of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, St Anne and St Joachim on the second storey.

Don't miss seeing the carriages displayed on the ground floor, the portraits of Benito Juárez, Ignacio Zaragoza, Porfirio Díaz and emperor Maximilian; also see the splendid collection, unique in the world, of 16th century codexes originating from the present-day town of Huaquechula!