Tepoztlán is a “pueblo mágico” according to the programme launched by the Mexican Tourism Board aimed at promoting and enhancing unknown places in the country, still repositories of a rich cultural tradition linked to their pre-Hispanic or colonial past.

In this place nestled in the mountains, amidst luxuriant vegetation concealing the traces of an ancient temple located on the summit of the neighbouring Cerro del Tepozteco – the “sacred mountain” – an athlete wishing to carve out a peaceful buen retiro for body and soul commissioned Mexico City-based Soler Orozco Arquitectos + Javier Sánchez to build a private spa literally submerged in the forest.

The building is characterised by a circular layout and a truncated cone-shaped volume made of volcanic stone, covered by a flat green roof. The path inside the space follows a cathartic process: an entrance tunnel penetrates the the stone “tumulus” and leads to a large circular chamber, empty and cavernous, dominated by a sculpture with the disturbing features of an Aztec god; from this room, illuminated by an upper skylight – from which rainwater seeps into the underground cisterns – one proceeds in a radial circuit on which the functional rooms are distributed (gymnasium, massage room, changing rooms, services, sauna and frigidarium); finally, a staircase on an axis with the initial entrance path leads back outside “a riveder le stelle” – as in Dante’s sulphurous journey – to the top of the building, from where one can appreciate the landscape pulsating with life.

A work of archaic and a-temporal charm which, in its circular shape, evokes the symbolism of cyclical, infinite and universal time, of perfection and the absence of conflict: a balance that this architecture finds not only in its geometry but also in the arms of Pacha Mama, Mother Earth, who envelops and protects it.