Saltillo

Saltillo is the capital of Coahuila and its biggest city, with 867,431 people at the 2020 census and just over a million in the metropolitan area, which makes it the 14th largest city in Mexico. It lies about an hour west of Monterrey along Highway 40, in a dry, temperate high valley: the yearly average is around 17 °C, rain is scarce (about 479 mm a year, mostly from May to October) and winter mornings can drop below freezing, with the odd snowfall in some years. Today it is a government seat, a university town and a big manufacturing center, with automotive plants on its outskirts.

The Portuguese explorer Alberto del Canto founded the Villa de Santiago del Saltillo shortly before 1577, at the foot of a small waterfall fed by a spring; that spring, the Ojo de Agua, still flows by the steps of the Santo Cristo del Ojo de Agua church and gave the city its name. Later, families from Tlaxcala settled beside it in San Esteban de la Nueva Tlaxcala, separated from the Spanish town by an irrigation ditch. The Tlaxcaltecas turned their side into orchards and gardens, and much of what Saltillo is still known for came from them: woven sarapes, fruit and milk sweets, and pan de pulque, bread leavened with fermented agave sap. The two towns merged under the single name Saltillo in 1831. From the late 17th century the annual Feria de Saltillo was a major trade fair on the Camino Real, and the city was briefly the capital of Coahuila y Texas in 1824 and a seat of Benito Juárez's government in 1864.

The historic center is easy to walk. The Catedral de Santiago, built in the mid-18th century, has a lavish churrigueresque façade, carved mahogany and cedar doors about 15 centimeters thick showing Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and a silver-plated altar. Across the Plaza de Armas, the Palacio de Gobierno has bright courtyards and murals of Coahuila's history by Salvador Tarazona, and a block away the Centro Cultural Vito Alessio Robles has more murals and free entry. South of the center, the Museo de las Aves de México displays more than 2,000 mounted birds covering nearly every species in the country, and the shady Alameda Zaragoza is the place for a Sunday stroll.

On the eastern side of the city, the Museo del Desierto, opened in 1999, explains the Chihuahuan Desert through fossils, dinosaurs found in Coahuila and live desert plants and reptiles. On a hill to the west, the large Cristo de las Galeras statue looks out over the city. Saltillo is also the gateway to the wine town of Parras de la Fuente, to the Sierra de Arteaga with its pine forests, and to the springs and gypsum dunes of Cuatro Ciénegas further north-west. The city's ceramic floor tiles are known across the country, and sarapes are still sold in the center.