[6][7] Popocatépetl is 70 km (43 mi) southeast of Mexico City, from where it can be seen regularly, depending on atmospheric conditions.

Legend says that many years ago, a villager met an old man on the slopes of the mountain, who introduced himself as Gregorio Chino Popocatépetl.

Thus, every March 12, the day of San Gregorio, the locals bring flowers and food to the volcano to celebrate the saint.

At least three previous major cones were destroyed by gravitational failure during the Pleistocene, producing massive debris avalanche deposits covering broad areas south of the volcano.

[1] Three major Plinian eruptions, the most recent of which took place about 800 AD, have occurred from Popocatépetl since the mid-Holocene, accompanied by pyroclastic flows and voluminous lahars that swept basins below the volcano.

[citation needed] The geological history of Popocatépetl began with the formation of the ancestral volcano Nexpayantla.

About 200,000 years ago, Nexpayantla collapsed in an eruption, leaving a caldera, in which the next volcano, known as El Fraile, began to form.

[citation needed] Popocatépetl also features prominently in the Juan Manuel Martinez Caltenco mural on the upper floor Municipal Palace of Atlixco, Puebla.

[citation needed] Jesús Helguera’s 1940 masterpiece La Leyenda de los Volcanes in Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art depicts the myth of Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl.