Pasaje Historico 5 de Mayo, Puebla

Pasaje Histórico 5 de Mayo is a tunnel with a distance of 477 meters located in Puebla de Zaragoza, it is approximately three and a half centuries old, since it is estimated, it could date from the second half of the 17th century. It ascends from the Barrio de Xanenetla, to the surroundings of the Fort of Loreto and Guadalupe. There are indications that this is only a section of what could be an underground network of between 10 and 12 kilometers, according to a hypothetical plan by the historian and journalist Enrique Cordero (1965).

The first investigations reveal that the tunnels were built after the foundation of the City in 1531. Puebla was one of the first cities formed during the Spanish colony and functioned as an important housing center for the New Spain clergy. The undergrounds were built in the following two centuries along with most of the churches, monasteries and the most representative buildings of the new city: the Town Hall and the Cathedral. The roads would have served, at first, to discreetly move the wealth of the Catholic Church.

During the archaeological explorations carried out starting in the 1990s within the Puebla Monuments area, the identification and recording of some of these elements has always been one of the objectives, although not always explicitly.

In the construction works of the Zaragoza viaduct between 2011 and 2012, one of the retaining walls of the old San Francisco river was located, and on this wall, towards the north side of the slope, a walled arch that, being explored turned out to be an underground gallery that goes north towards the Xanenetla neighborhood and, according to the trace, it is very likely that it continues to slope upwards on the slope of the Amacueyatepec hill (Cerro de Loreto).

On February 20, 2016, it was opened to the public and has been considered one of the most important tourist attractions in the City of Puebla.

The passageways have different architectural styles depending on their time of construction and until now different arch systems have been found that have supported the structures through the centuries. The builders used a composition of flaky stones, polished rocks and glued with the materials available at the time to form a semicircular arch with an appearance similar to the Catalan vault.

It has a site museum where the largest number of vestiges on display can be seen, from old bullets, horseshoes, buckles, knives, bayonets, glass containers and scales.