From a rooftop vantage point above Cuernavaca's ancient battlements, the soaring baroque bell tower of the Cathedral of the Assumption dominates a dramatic sky thick with rolling clouds — a silver-gelatin real-photo postcard that captures the "City of Eternal Spring" in its mid-century prime, mountains hazed in the distance beyond a skyline still free of modern sprawl. The cathedral complex, begun by Hernán Cortés's Franciscan friars in 1529, looms over the crenellated parapet wall in the foreground — those distinctive merlons unmistakably belonging to the Palacio de Cortés — while secondary domes and a modernist hotel block hint at a city caught between colonial past and postwar boom. On the reverse, a traveler identified only as "E.T." writes warmly to friends named Carlos and family in Rochester, N.Y., describing a week in Mexico City, a side trip to Oaxaca where a bad cold slowed her down, the murals of Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros, the ruins of Teotihuacán, Monte Albán, and Mitla, lively markets, handcrafts, and a charming pension with a garden and swimming pool — an itinerary that reads like a golden-era art-lover's grand tour of Mexico.