There is a place on the western edge of Mexico City where the noise of twenty million people simply stops. Where pine trees press in close, mist hangs between branches, and the only sounds are birdsong and the crunch of leaves underfoot. Here, hidden in one of the oldest protected forests in the Americas, stands the abandoned convent of Desierto de los Leones, a place of secrets, solitude, and stone.
A Name With a Twist
First things first: there are no lions here, and there is no desert.
The name Desierto de los Leones, Desert of the Lions, is a double riddle. The “desert” part is a spiritual term, borrowed from the early Christian tradition of hermitic monks who called places of retreat and contemplation desiertos, regardless of geography. And the “lions”? They trace back either to the León family, who helped the Carmelite monks secure the land, or to the pumas (leones in colonial Spanish) that once roamed these mountains. Those pumas are long gone. But the name, and the mystique, remain.
The Carmelites and Their Mountain Refuge
In 1605, a group of Discalced Carmelites, an order of barefoot monks devoted to prayer, austerity, and silence, chose this remote mountain forest southwest of Mexico City to build their retreat. Construction began on January 23, 1606, and within a few years they had raised not just a convent, but an entire sacred landscape: a main cloister, ten hermitages scattered through the woods (with names like La Soledad, San Elías, and Getsemaní), and a perimeter wall enclosing the whole.
The full official name they gave it was extraordinary in its length and piety: El Santo Desierto de Nuestra Señora del Carmen de los Montes de Santa Fe. The world, mercifully, shortened it.
The monks’ chosen location was not random. These mountains, thick with oyamel firs and pine, fed the rivers that supplied Mexico City with water. The isolation was the point, the Carmelites came here precisely because it was far from everything, a place where they could devote themselves entirely to reflection and Christian meditation.
But the mountains had other ideas. The altitude, the cold, the damp, by 1722, just over a century after construction, the original convent had deteriorated so badly it had to be demolished. A new structure rose in its place just to the south. This is the building visitors walk through today, completed in 1814, though it too would soon be abandoned.
Abandoned by History
History arrived at the convent’s door in the form of war. When Mexico’s War of Independence ignited in 1810, the Carmelites were forced to abandon their peaceful sanctuary. They never returned in any permanent way. The convent passed through various hands, fell into disrepair, was plundered during the turbulent nineteenth century, and slowly became the magnificent ruin it is today, roofless in places, draped in moss, haunted by echoes.
The land itself fared better. As early as 1786, the colonial government had recognized the importance of protecting these watersheds. In 1876 it was officially declared a forest reserve. And in 1917, President Venustiano Carranza made it Mexico’s very first national park, a milestone in the country’s environmental history, covering some 1,529 hectares of mountain forest.
What You Find Inside
Walking into the ex-convent today is stepping into a kind of beautiful incompleteness. The baroque stonework is still imposing, thick walls, arched doorways, carved facades, but nature has reclaimed much of the interior. Ferns grow from cracks in the masonry. Light falls through open ceilings onto stone floors worn smooth by centuries.
The cloisters are the heart of the complex, their proportions quiet and contemplative even now. Hidden within the walls are secret passageways and subterranean tunnels, features that have fueled generations of local legend and ghost stories. (The convent has a reputation as one of the most haunted places in Mexico City, and the nocturnal tours that run on weekends do nothing to dispel this.) There are dream-like gardens, a chapel known as the Capilla de los Secretos, and fragments of colonial-era frescoes still visible on certain walls.
Outside, the ten hermitages are scattered through the surrounding forest, some restored, some barely there, little stone cells where individual monks would retreat for solitary prayer, connected to each other and the main convent by forest paths.
The Forest Itself
It would be a mistake to visit Desierto de los Leones and focus only on the stones. The national park surrounding the convent is extraordinary in its own right, miles of trails winding through cool, misty forest dominated by oyamel firs, the same trees that shelter monarch butterflies in their winter migration. White-tailed deer move through the undergrowth. The air smells of pine and earth. On clear days, views open toward the valleys below.
For those with energy and sturdy shoes, the park’s highest point, Cerro San Miguel, rewards the climb with panoramic views over the city and mountains beyond.
Getting There
The convent sits about 40 minutes from central Mexico City, accessible by taxi from metro stations or by Bus #116, which runs directly to the park entrance. The convent is open Tuesday through Sunday, 10am to 5pm, with a small entrance fee. Wear layers, the mountain air is noticeably cooler than the city below, and mist can roll in at any hour.
Why It Matters
In a megalopolis defined by density and noise, Desierto de los Leones is something genuinely rare: a place where you can be alone with four centuries of history and the quiet of an old forest. The Carmelites chose this spot because they believed that distance from the world was necessary for certain kinds of understanding. That logic holds, even now.
Come for the architecture, stay for the silence. The desert, the spiritual kind, is still here.
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