Zacualtipán

Zacualtipán comes from Tzacualtipan, translated as "place of hiding places" or "place of mounds or pyramids"; its glyph is a five-step pyramid with a hand above it. The town sits at 1,979 metres in Hidalgo's Sierra Alta, on the Carso Huasteco plateau, where more than 2,000 millimetres of rain fall each year and the average temperature is around 14 °C: mist country, with pine, oak and fir forest, and a few coffee plots. It became a municipality on 26 April 1861 and was granted city status on 8 March 1943. It had 29,472 residents in 2020; more than half of the municipality's working population is employed in industry, including small garment workshops.

The oldest building is the chapel of Jesús Nazareno, built by the Augustinians and dated 1572, with a stone façade and a bell gable. The parish church of Santa María de la Encarnación dates from 1734, and there is also the parish of Dolores. The local curiosity is the Casa de Piedra, a house hollowed out of a huge boulder, according to the municipal encyclopedia by a fugitive from justice in the early 18th century. In Barrio Cosapa, the Museo Regional de la Sierra Alta, opened in 2009, covers the region's architecture, traditional medicine, farming, legends and festivals across eight rooms. In Barrio Arados, the house where the revolutionary general Felipe Ángeles lived has been a museum since 2016, with three rooms on his role between 1908 and 1916.

Festivals blend religion and farming. On 2 February maize and bean seed is blessed for planting; at carnival the men dress up and dance through the streets to huapango trios and brass bands; on Holy Cross day decorated wooden crosses are set on wells, houses and fields; and on San Juan's day people used to wash their hair at the wells so it would grow. The most deeply rooted celebration is Todos Santos, from 30 October to 3 November, as across the Sierra Alta.