Nuestra Señora de los Angeles is one of the most famous churches in Guerrero, a long-standing quarter in the historical part of Mexico City. Its founding history dates back as far as 1580, according to which a citizen named Izayoque found a canvas with an image of the Holy Mary in the ruins and copied it onto a clay wall. Later, the mural was reworked and incorporated into the church erected to the veneration of Mary and opened in 1808 – it swiftly became the centre of life in the community – until 2017, when the strongest of the three earthquakes in September led to the collapse of parts of the church’s dome, with its invaluable stained-glass windows.
Since the Nuestra Señora de los Angeles is an historical edifice of national significance, its preservation and the repair of the damage wrought by the earthquake are being jointly arranged and financed by the Episcopal Church, the Mexican Ministry of Culture, and the heritage protection authority Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH). In order to do justice to the church’s position as the heart of the local neighbourhood, local actors, neighbours, and parish members together developed a project plan as regards restoration of the dome and the repair and/or reconstruction of the coloured stained-glass windows. Prior to the quake, the dome boasted eight stained-glass windows painted with the hierarchy of the angels. Five sustained severe damage when the dome collapsed, three were completely destroyed. The glass-painting workshop run by Franz Xaver Zettler – who founded the Royal Bavarian Courtly Stained-Class Workshop – produced and installed windows, each of which had a diameter of three metres, between 1900 and 1913. To this day, the original design drawings are in the possession of Mayer‘sche Hofkunstanstalt in Munich, the workshop set up by Zettler’s father-in-law, meaning reconstruction faithful to the originals is possible.
