Centro Histórico de Chihuahua

Chihuahua's Centro Histórico is the original grid of the Real de Minas de San Francisco de Cuéllar, the mining settlement founded on 12 October 1709 that grew into the state capital. A 2014 decree of the state congress set its boundaries: Avenida Niños Héroes to the north, Avenida Pacheco to the east, Avenida 20 de Noviembre to the south and Bulevar Díaz Ordaz to the west. Inside are more than 600 historic buildings listed by INAH, and in 2023 Mexico's federal Tourism Secretariat named it a Barrio Mágico, the first in the state.

The centrepiece is the cathedral facing the Plaza de Armas. Work began in 1725 on a parish church for Saint Francis of Assisi and Our Lady of Regla and was not finished until 1826; its ochre stone façade, carved by Antonio de Nava and dated 1741, holds the apostles in its niches and is counted the finest baroque monument in northern Mexico. It became a cathedral in 1891, and the Museum of Sacred Art fills its basement. A few blocks away is the core of the Independence story: the old Federal Palace, now Casa Chihuahua, keeps the cell where Miguel Hidalgo spent his last days; in the Palacio de Gobierno, the Altar a la Patria marks the spot where he was shot in 1811; and the church of San Francisco was his first burial place.

Since 2012 a regeneration project has reworked the main square and closed several streets to cars to create a pedestrian promenade, while Calle Libertad remains the downtown shopping street. A few blocks away you also find Quinta Gameros, an early 20th-century art nouveau mansion with its furniture collection, the Museo Casa de Juárez, where President Benito Juárez lived during his stay in the 1860s, Parque Lerdo with its lake and bandstand, and stretches of the colonial aqueduct. September, with its Independence festivities, is the liveliest time to come.