León

León, officially León de los Aldama, is the largest city in the state of Guanajuato and one of the biggest in Mexico: the 2020 census counted about 1.58 million people in the city and 1.72 million in the municipality. It sits on the plains of the Bajío and is above all a working, industrial city, famous for leather. Around 70 percent of the shoes made in Mexico come from León and its surroundings, and its workshops also turn out boots, belts and jackets; locals are nicknamed panzaverdes, 'green bellies', after the stains left by tanning.

The Spanish founded the town on 20 January 1576 as a frontier settlement against the Chichimecas. The centre keeps a colonial core around the Plaza de los Mártires, named for protesters shot there in January 1946, and the Basilica Cathedral of Nuestra Señora de la Luz, begun by the Jesuits in 1746 and consecrated in 1866. The city's best-known landmarks are newer: the Arco de la Calzada de los Héroes, a triumphal arch from the late 19th century crowned since 1958 by a bronze lion, and the Templo Expiatorio, a neo-Gothic shrine begun in 1920, slowed by the Cristero War and still being finished, with catacomb-like crypts beneath it.

For visitors León is mostly about shopping and events. Shoe and leather malls such as Plaza del Zapato and Plaza Piel sit near the bus station, and the twice-yearly SAPICA trade fair draws buyers. Culture centres on the Forum Cultural Guanajuato, with the state art and history museum and the Teatro del Bicentenario opera house. Every November the Festival Internacional del Globo fills the sky over the Parque Metropolitano with hot-air balloons. León also has an extensive network of bike lanes integrated with its bus rapid transit system.