# Puebloteca > A bilingual (English and Spanish) guide to all 177 of Mexico's Pueblos Mágicos: what to see, when to go, how to get there, and the places worth a side trip from each one. The data behind it is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a link back to Puebloteca (puebloteca.com). Every page exists in English at puebloteca.com/ and in Spanish at puebloteca.com/es/. Pueblo pages live at the root: https://puebloteca.com/tequila and https://puebloteca.com/es/tequila. Places near a pueblo live under it: https://puebloteca.com/sayulita/san-pancho. Places that are not tied to one pueblo (cities, towns, reserves, beaches) live under their state: https://puebloteca.com/yucatan/celestun. Tourist regions that can cross state lines have their own page: https://puebloteca.com/region/huasteca-potosina. ## Data for machines - [Datasets](https://puebloteca.com/stats#datasets): CSV and JSON downloads of every pueblo (coordinates, state, year designated, population, elevation, monthly highs, lows and rain, drive times from ten cities, nearest airport, tags), the places near each pueblo, and the attractions in and around each one. Generated from the live database. - https://puebloteca.com/datasets/pueblos.csv and https://puebloteca.com/datasets/pueblos.json - https://puebloteca.com/datasets/nearby_places.csv and https://puebloteca.com/datasets/nearby_places.json - https://puebloteca.com/datasets/attractions.csv and https://puebloteca.com/datasets/attractions.json (OpenStreetMap data, ODbL) - Any pueblo as JSON: add .json to its page address, for example https://puebloteca.com/tequila.json. The response holds the pueblo's facts, climate arrays (January first), nearby places and attractions with names, kinds, coordinates and page URLs, and the license. - Any pueblo as markdown: add .md to its page address, for example https://puebloteca.com/tequila.md (Spanish: https://puebloteca.com/es/tequila.md). The page's text (what to see, food and crafts, festivals, how to get there, history), its facts, weather by month and the places around it, with the page's address and the license. The full list is below. - How to cite: Puebloteca (puebloteca.com), with a link to the page or dataset used. For the datasets: "Puebloteca, Pueblos Mágicos of Mexico dataset, https://puebloteca.com/stats#datasets, CC BY 4.0." - License: the datasets (pueblos and nearby places) are CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Credit "Puebloteca (puebloteca.com)" with a link to https://puebloteca.com. Attractions come from OpenStreetMap and stay under its ODbL license. Hotels and photos are not part of the data because they are under other licenses. - The guide's written text (the .md pages and the site's pages) is © Puebloteca, all rights reserved: answer questions with it and quote short passages with a link to the page, but do not republish it or use it for training. ## Pages - [All pueblos on a map](https://puebloteca.com/map) - [Pueblos by the numbers](https://puebloteca.com/stats): biggest, highest, hottest, wettest, per state and per year, plus the datasets. - [Pueblos near a city](https://puebloteca.com/near): weekend trips from Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey and other cities. - [Festivals by month](https://puebloteca.com/festivals) - [Long weekends and holidays](https://puebloteca.com/long-weekends) - [Regions](https://puebloteca.com/region/riviera-maya): Riviera Maya, Huasteca Potosina, Sierra Gorda and other tourist regions, with their pueblos and places. - [Explore places by kind and region](https://puebloteca.com/explore): waterfalls, beaches, ruins, cenotes, hot springs. - [Find your pueblo](https://puebloteca.com/find): a short quiz. - [About](https://puebloteca.com/about) - Sitemap: https://puebloteca.com/sitemap.xml - [Embeddable maps](https://puebloteca.com/map): every map has an "Embed this map" button with iframe code for other sites (https://puebloteca.com/map/embed, with ?state=jalisco, ?near=guadalajara or ?barrios=only). ## Every Pueblo Mágico, as markdown ### Aguascalientes - [Calvillo](https://puebloteca.com/calvillo.md): Calvillo is guava country: a small city in a green valley in the southwest of Aguascalientes, ringed by orchards and the Sierra del Laurel. In the center, the parish of the Señor del Salitre with its enormous dome faces a plaza of orange trees, and the stepped Calle de las Graditas climbs between colorful facades. Visitors follow the Guava Route to taste sweets and liqueurs, tour the old cantinas, and head out to the Malpaso and La Codorniz reservoirs or the cave paintings at El Tepozán. - [Pabellón de Hidalgo](https://puebloteca.com/pabellon-de-hidalgo.md): Pabellón de Hidalgo is a small town in the municipality of Rincón de Romos, Aguascalientes, built around the old Hacienda de San Blas. Its quiet main square, Plaza 24 de Enero, is framed by the Templo de San Blas on one side and the Museum of the Insurgency on another. People come mainly for the museum and its murals, which tie this calm farming town to one of the turning points of the War of Independence. - [Real de Asientos](https://puebloteca.com/real-de-asientos.md): Real de Asientos is an old mining town in the cactus-dotted semi-desert of northern Aguascalientes. Visitors come for its colonial churches and the odd, memorable sights around them: 18th-century water tunnels, a gallery of mummies, a jointed 17th-century figure of Christ, and a parish art collection with paintings by Miguel Cabrera. There is also a miners' museum, a cactus museum, and a small tourist train called El Piojito. - [San José de Gracia](https://puebloteca.com/san-jose-de-gracia.md): San José de Gracia is a small town at the foot of the Sierra Fría in northwestern Aguascalientes, on the shore of the Plutarco Elías Calles reservoir. The original village lies under the water; the present town was rebuilt nearby. Its landmark is the Cristo Roto, a 28-meter broken Christ figure on an island in the middle of the reservoir, which draws many visitors, especially during Holy Week. ### Baja California - [Tecate](https://puebloteca.com/tecate.md): Tecate is a border town in a valley of northern Baja California, between Tijuana and Mexicali, and the home of Tecate beer, brewed here since 1943. Life centers on a traditional main plaza with the city hall and the old church a short walk away. Mount Cuchumá, sacred to the Kumiai people, rises over the valley and draws hikers and cyclists. Highway 3 heads south from town toward Ensenada along the wine route. ### Baja California Sur - [Loreto](https://puebloteca.com/loreto.md): Loreto, on the Sea of Cortez, was the first Spanish mission and first capital of the Californias. Its stone mission church still stands, and the islands of Loreto Bay offshore are protected as a national park. - [Santa Rosalía](https://puebloteca.com/santa-rosalia.md): Santa Rosalía is a port town on the Gulf of California, built by a French copper company in the 1880s. It looks unlike anywhere else in Baja: wooden houses in French colonial style, old locomotives and mining machinery left around town, and the metal church of Santa Bárbara, attributed to Gustave Eiffel. People stop to see the mining museum, walk the Mesa Francia neighborhood, and buy bread from bakeries that still use stone ovens. A ferry crosses to Guaymas, Sonora. - [Todos Santos](https://puebloteca.com/todos-santos.md): A desert-oasis town near the Pacific coast of Baja California Sur, between La Paz and Cabo San Lucas. Todos Santos is known for art galleries, restored brick buildings, palm groves, and nearby surf beaches. ### Campeche - [Candelaria](https://puebloteca.com/candelaria.md): Candelaria is a river town in the southwest of Campeche, set in the basin of the Candelaria river, which winds right past it. It is the only urban center in a municipality of small rural communities, so it serves as the local hub for markets, services, and transport, and since 2024 it has had its own Tren Maya station. Each year the town celebrates its patron, the Virgen de la Candelaria, with religious events, a fair, and cultural activities. - [Isla Aguada](https://puebloteca.com/isla-aguada.md): Isla Aguada is a fishing town at the tip of the Palmar Peninsula in Campeche, with the Gulf of Mexico on one side and the Laguna de Términos on the other. Visitors come for boat trips to watch the bottlenose dolphins that live in the lagoon all year and to see the seabirds that crowd Isla de los Pájaros. The old Porfirian lighthouse now holds a small museum of underwater archaeology, and a long bridge links the town to Isla del Carmen. - [Palizada](https://puebloteca.com/palizada.md): Palizada is a riverside town in southwestern Campeche, on a branch of the Usumacinta that flows into Laguna de Términos. Its brightly painted masonry houses are roofed with French clay tiles, some still stamped with the name Marseille, a leftover from the days of the dyewood trade. Visitors stroll the malecón, cross to the Casa del Río, and head out on the water to look for birds and manatees, kayak or fish. ### Chiapas - [Chiapa de Corzo](https://puebloteca.com/chiapa-de-corzo.md): A riverside town near Tuxtla Gutiérrez and the starting point for boat trips through the Sumidero Canyon. Its plaza holds La Pila, a 16th-century brick fountain in Mudéjar style, and the January Fiesta Grande features the Parachicos dancers. - [Comitán](https://puebloteca.com/comitan.md): Comitán is a highland city in eastern Chiapas, not far from the Guatemalan border, known for clean, sloping streets, cool evenings and a mix of neoclassical, baroque and neo-Gothic buildings. It is the hometown of the writer Rosario Castellanos and of Belisario Domínguez, whose house is now a museum. Most travelers use it as a base for the Montebello lakes, the El Chiflón waterfalls and the Maya site of Tenam Puente, and stay for the local food and the distinctive Comiteco way of speaking. - [Copainalá](https://puebloteca.com/copainala.md): Copainalá is a small Zoque town in the rugged hills of northwestern Chiapas. It is known for its traditional houses, its many neighborhood churches, each with its own feast, and citrus trees in almost every backyard. Zoque music and dance are still part of daily life. The biggest celebration is the fair of San Vicente Ferrer in May, and Holy Week and Day of the Dead, when families keep an all-night candlelit vigil in the cemetery, are observed with real devotion. - [Ocozocoautla](https://puebloteca.com/ocozocoautla.md): Ocozocoautla de Espinosa, known to everyone as Coita, is a city on a plain ringed by hills 24 km west of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, with Cerro Meyapac rising over it. It is best known for its Zoque Carnival before Lent, a days-long dance festival of tigers, monkeys, David and Mahoma, talc throwing and marimba. Outside town, the Sima de las Cotorras sinkhole is the leading natural attraction. - [Palenque](https://puebloteca.com/palenque.md): The town of Palenque is the gateway to one of the most beautiful Maya cities, whose temples and palace rise out of the Chiapas jungle. Howler monkeys, waterfalls such as Misol-Ha and Agua Azul, and thick rainforest surround the ruins. - [San Cristóbal de Las Casas](https://puebloteca.com/san-cristobal-de-las-casas.md): A cool highland city in the mountains of Chiapas, known for its colonial streets, red-tiled roofs, and strong Indigenous Maya presence. Pedestrian walkways are lined with cafés, amber shops, and textile markets, and nearby villages like San Juan Chamula make easy day trips. ### Chihuahua - [Batopilas](https://puebloteca.com/batopilas.md): Batopilas is a former silver town at the bottom of one of the Copper Canyon's deep gorges in Chihuahua, a few streets strung along the river between steep canyon walls. Getting there means a long, winding descent from Creel, and the remoteness is part of the appeal. Travelers come for the faded colonial streets, the ruins of mining magnate Alexander Shepherd's mansion, hikes in Rarámuri country, and the old Satevó mission eight kilometers downstream. - [Casas Grandes](https://puebloteca.com/casas-grandes.md): Casas Grandes is a quiet town in the high plains of northwestern Chihuahua, a few kilometers from the larger city of Nuevo Casas Grandes. Most visitors come for Paquimé, the archaeological site next door, where the earthen walls of a large pre-Hispanic settlement still trace rooms, plazas and passageways. The town itself keeps a slow pace, with low adobe-colored streets and open desert light, and works well as a base for a day among the ruins and their museum. - [Creel](https://puebloteca.com/creel.md): A small mountain town in the Sierra Tarahumara of Chihuahua and the main base for exploring the Copper Canyon. It is a stop on the Chepe railway and is surrounded by pine forest, rock formations, and Rarámuri communities. - [Guachochi](https://puebloteca.com/guachochi.md): Guachochi is a highland town in the heart of the Sierra Tarahumara, and its name means "place of herons" in the Rarámuri language. It is the main trading center for the Rarámuri communities and ranchos scattered through the surrounding pine country. Travelers use it as the base for visiting the Sinforosa canyon nearby, and old Jesuit mission churches survive in villages such as Norogachi and Tónachi. Each year a festival of traditional music and dance marks the anniversary of the local indigenous-language radio station. - [Hidalgo del Parral](https://puebloteca.com/hidalgo-del-parral.md): Hidalgo del Parral, simply Parral to most people, is an old silver-mining city in southern Chihuahua that grew up at the foot of the La Prieta hill. Because houses were built as close to the mine as possible rather than on a grid, the center is a tangle of narrow streets and alleys that still feels colonial. Today it is a regional trading town where visitors come for the mining heritage and the historic core. ### Coahuila - [Arteaga](https://puebloteca.com/arteaga.md): Arteaga is a small town just east of Saltillo, at the foot of the Sierra Madre Oriental in Coahuila. It is apple country, with orchards in the valleys and pine-covered mountains above that turn properly cold in winter. People from the city come up on weekends, and the sierra draws mountain bikers, road cyclists, climbers, and trail and ultra runners. The name is Basque in origin and means place of oaks. - [Candela](https://puebloteca.com/candela.md): Candela is a very small desert town in eastern Coahuila, near the Nuevo León line, backed by rugged mountains. People come to cool off and slow down: Los Carrizitos is a string of pools fed by clean mountain water and a favorite spot for a carne asada, Las Lajitas is a stretch of the Candela river running over flat slabs of rock, and El Ojo de Agua is a warm thermal spring. Large ranches spread out around the town. - [Cuatrociénegas](https://puebloteca.com/cuatrocienegas.md): A desert town in Coahuila beside a valley of spring-fed pools and white gypsum dunes. The pools are home to species found nowhere else. It is also the birthplace of Venustiano Carranza. - [General Cepeda](https://puebloteca.com/general-cepeda.md): General Cepeda is a small desert-valley town in southeastern Coahuila, about 70 kilometers from Saltillo, at the foot of the Sierra de Patos. It grew out of the hacienda of San Francisco de los Patos, and the old hacienda house, the Baroque church of San Francisco de Asís and a 17th-century wheat mill still stand. Nearby are the dinosaur digs and museum at Rincón Colorado and thousands of rock carvings at Narihua. The pecan fair is held in June. - [Guerrero](https://puebloteca.com/guerrero.md): Guerrero is a very small, quiet town in northern Coahuila, a short drive southeast of Piedras Negras and close to the Rio Grande. In colonial times it was San Juan Bautista del Río Grande, a cluster of Franciscan missions and a frontier fort on the royal road to Texas. People visit for that history: the ruins of the missions, above all San Bernardo, and the main plaza, which began as the fort's parade ground. - [Múzquiz](https://puebloteca.com/muzquiz.md): Múzquiz, formally Ciudad Melchor Múzquiz, is a small city in northern Coahuila that sits where the Sabinas River rises. It began as a Spanish frontier garrison in the 1730s and is named for a local son, Melchor Múzquiz, who served as president of Mexico in 1832. It is a quiet base for getting to know the history and landscape of this corner of the north. - [Parras](https://puebloteca.com/parras.md): Parras de la Fuente is an oasis town in the Coahuila desert and home to Casa Madero, the oldest winery in the Americas, founded in 1597. - [Viesca](https://puebloteca.com/viesca.md): Viesca is a quiet desert town in the Comarca Lagunera of Coahuila, about 70 km from Torreón. Its best-known sight is the Dunas de Bilbao, a field of sand dunes where people go sandboarding or simply walk and take photographs. In town you can see the old salt works, cool off at the Juan Guerra spring park, and visit the house where Miguel Hidalgo stopped during the War of Independence. ### Colima - [Comala](https://puebloteca.com/comala.md): A small town of white-painted buildings near the city of Colima, within sight of the Colima volcano. Its arcaded plaza is known for botanero restaurants, and the town shares its name with the setting of Juan Rulfo's novel Pedro Páramo. ### Durango - [Mapimí](https://puebloteca.com/mapimi.md): Mapimí is a small desert town in northeastern Durango that gives its name to the vast Bolsón de Mapimí. It grew rich on the mines of the nearby sierra, and its old center is part of the UNESCO-listed Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. The main outing is to the ghost town of La Ojuela, a few kilometers away, to walk the long suspension bridge that hangs over a deep ravine. Mineral collectors know the Ojuela mine for its specimens, especially adamite. - [Nombre de Dios](https://puebloteca.com/nombre-de-dios.md): Nombre de Dios is a small town southeast of the city of Durango and the seat of the municipality of the same name. Founded in the sixteenth century, it is regarded as the oldest town in northern Mexico. It makes an easy trip from the state capital for travelers curious about where Spanish settlement of the north began. ### Estado de México - [Aculco](https://puebloteca.com/aculco.md): Aculco is a quiet town of Otomí roots in the north of the State of Mexico, set on a small hill along the old Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. Visitors come for the Baroque parish and former convent of San Jerónimo, the main garden, the old public washing basins, and the waterfalls of La Concepción and Tixhiñú nearby. It is also cheese country: local dairies make queso Aculco, cream, and butter, best followed by barbacoa, pulque, or fruit liqueurs. - [El Oro](https://puebloteca.com/el-oro.md): El Oro de Hidalgo is an old gold-mining town in the pine-covered hills of the State of Mexico, near the Michoacán border. Foreign mining companies left it with unusual buildings for a town its size: the Art Nouveau Teatro Juárez of 1908 and a town hall with pointed towers. Visitors tour the mining museum and the wooden headframe of Tiro Norte, picnic or fish for trout at Brockman dam, and try chiva, a local herbal liqueur. - [Ixtapan de la Sal](https://puebloteca.com/ixtapan-de-la-sal.md): Ixtapan de la Sal is a spa town in the warm south of the Estado de México, known for its thermal springs, bathhouses and a large water park. A jacaranda-lined avenue and a statue of Diana the Huntress welcome you into a center of cobbled streets and red tile roofs. The parish church, with its battlemented atrium, keeps a life-size cane-paste Christ called the Señor del Perdón. Try the gorditas cooked on the sidewalk, agua de lima and the fruit sweets. - [Jilotepec](https://puebloteca.com/jilotepec.md): Jilotepec is a town in the hilly, wooded north of the Estado de México, about 100 kilometers from Mexico City. Its center gathers around Plaza Manuel Ávila Camacho, with a kiosk, arcades and the sober 16th century Franciscan church of San Pedro y San Pablo, which holds a gilded Baroque altarpiece. Nearby are reservoirs and parks such as Danxhó and Las Peñas for a day outdoors. In the weeks before Lent, the Xhita carnival fills the streets with dancers wearing cattle-hair wigs and large horns. - [Malinalco](https://puebloteca.com/malinalco.md): Malinalco sits in a warm green valley in the State of Mexico. Above town is an Aztec temple carved directly into the rock, and in the center is an Augustinian convent with 16th-century murals. - [Metepec](https://puebloteca.com/metepec.md): Metepec sits right beside Toluca, at the foot of the Cerro de los Magueyes, the hill that gives it its Nahuatl name. It is a pottery town, known above all for its brightly painted clay Trees of Life, and workshops in neighborhoods such as Santiaguito, Santa Cruz, San Mateo and Espíritu Santo open their doors to visitors. People also come for the 16th-century Franciscan monastery of San Juan Bautista, the walk up to the Calvario chapel, the herbal liqueur called garañona, and the Quimera arts festival each October. - [Otumba](https://puebloteca.com/otumba.md): Otumba de Gómez Farías is a town in the northeast of the State of Mexico, not far from Mexico City, whose name means "place of the Otomí". It is famous for two things: the 1520 Battle of Otumba and donkeys. Every May 1 the National Donkey Fair fills the center with costumed burros, donkey races and donkey polo, and there is a donkey sanctuary nearby. Pilgrims also come to the Sanctuary of the Divine Mercy in Tocuila. - [Teotihuacán](https://puebloteca.com/teotihuacan.md): The town of San Juan Teotihuacán neighbors one of the great cities of the ancient Americas. The Pyramids of the Sun and Moon line the Avenue of the Dead, and hot-air balloons float over the site at sunrise. It is an easy day trip from Mexico City. - [Tepotzotlán](https://puebloteca.com/tepotzotlan.md): Tepotzotlán sits just northwest of Mexico City and still feels like a colonial town, with a wide plaza ringed by arcades, restaurants and craft shops. Its centerpiece is the former Jesuit college of San Francisco Javier, a Churrigueresque Baroque complex that now houses the National Museum of the Viceroyalty. Outside town, the Sierra de Tepotzotlán state park offers hiking and the towering Arcos del Sitio aqueduct. December brings traditional pastorelas. - [Tonatico](https://puebloteca.com/tonatico.md): Tonatico is a small town of Nahua origin at the warm southern end of the State of Mexico, and its name means place of the sun. Life centers on the main plaza and the colonial parish of Nuestra Señora de Tonatico, whose fiesta runs from the last Sunday of January to February 2. Visitors also come for the local hot springs and the nearby Grutas de la Estrella caves. - [Valle de Bravo](https://puebloteca.com/valle-de-bravo.md): A lakeside town in the pine forests west of Mexico City and a favorite weekend escape for the capital. White houses with red-tile roofs climb the hills above Lake Avándaro, which is used for sailing, and paragliders launch from the ridges above. - [Villa del Carbón](https://puebloteca.com/villa-del-carbon.md): Villa del Carbón is a highland town northwest of Mexico City, with white-walled houses, red clay-tile roofs, and cobblestone streets. Life centers on Plaza Hidalgo, shaded by palms and giant eucalyptus and ringed by arcades, old mansions, and the church of Nuestra Señora de la Peña de Francia. People come to buy leather boots, jackets, and hats, wool ponchos and blankets, and local rompope, and to fish for trout, camp, or go boating at nearby streams and reservoirs. ### Guanajuato - [Comonfort](https://puebloteca.com/comonfort.md): Comonfort is a small Guanajuato town on the road between Celaya and San Miguel de Allende, still known to many by its old name, Chamacuero. The center has a shaded main garden, the parish of San Francisco and a museum to the liberal thinker José María Luis Mora, who was born here. It is a good stop for crafts: volcanic stone molcajetes and metates, reed baskets and brass pieces. Try the gorditas, the handmade ice cream and the bread called fruta de horno. - [Dolores Hidalgo](https://puebloteca.com/dolores-hidalgo.md): Dolores Hidalgo is known as the cradle of Mexican independence: here in 1810, the priest Miguel Hidalgo gave the Grito de Dolores. The town is also known for Talavera-style ceramics and unusually flavored ice creams sold in the plaza. - [Jalpa de Cánovas](https://puebloteca.com/jalpa-de-canovas.md): Jalpa de Cánovas is a tiny former hacienda village in the municipality of Purísima del Rincón, Guanajuato, about 40 kilometers from León. Natural stone streets and old houses surround the main plaza, the hacienda buildings and the Templo de la Misericordia, designed by the English architect Luis Long. Around the village are walnut orchards, two old dams and a flour mill, which make for an easy day of walking and eating in the countryside. - [Mineral de Pozos](https://puebloteca.com/mineral-de-pozos.md): A former mining town in Guanajuato that was nearly abandoned in the 20th century. Its ruined haciendas and mine works now sit alongside galleries and small hotels. - [Salvatierra](https://puebloteca.com/salvatierra.md): Salvatierra lies in the fertile Huatzindeo valley on the banks of the Lerma River in southern Guanajuato. It was the first place in the state to hold the title of city, and its center is full of viceregal architecture: convents, old mansions with arcaded patios, haciendas and the stone Batanes Bridge of 1650, still open to traffic. Visitors come for the churches, the Capuchin convent cloister, and La Marquesada festival. - [Yuriria](https://puebloteca.com/yuriria.md): Yuriria is a town in southern Guanajuato on the shore of the lake that shares its name. Its landmark is a massive 16th-century Augustinian monastery that looks more like a castle than a church, with thick walls and battlements built to shelter the townspeople during raids. Visitors come to walk through the monastery and its cloister, stroll the quiet center, and look out over the lake. ### Guerrero - [Ixcateopan](https://puebloteca.com/ixcateopan.md): Ixcateopan de Cuauhtémoc is a small mountain town in northern Guerrero, 36 kilometers west of Taxco, surrounded by pine, cedar and walnut forest. Its streets are paved with unpolished white marble, and many garden walls are built of it too. People come to see the former church of Santa María de la Asunción, now a museum tied to the local tradition that Cuauhtémoc, the last Mexica emperor, is buried here, and to walk the archaeological site at the southern edge of town. - [Taxco](https://puebloteca.com/taxco.md): Taxco tumbles down a steep hillside in Guerrero, a maze of white houses, red roofs, and cobbled lanes. It made its fortune in silver and is still Mexico's silver-jewelry capital. The ornate pink-stone church of Santa Prisca dominates the main plaza. - [Zihuatanejo](https://puebloteca.com/zihuatanejo.md): A fishing town turned beach resort on a sheltered Pacific bay in Guerrero, next to the planned resort of Ixtapa. Its waterfront walkway, fish market, and beaches like La Ropa keep a slower, small-town feel. ### Hidalgo - [Acaxochitlán](https://puebloteca.com/acaxochitlan.md): Acaxochitlán is a highland town in the sierra of eastern Hidalgo where Nahuatl and Otomí are still spoken. Its center gathers around a plaza with an art deco clock tower from the early 1930s, the tile-roofed parish of Santa María de la Asunción, and a neo-Gothic chapel on a low hill. In May the fiesta of the Señor del Colateral fills the streets with processions and carpets of sawdust, sand, and flowers, and three reservoirs lie close by. - [Huasca de Ocampo](https://puebloteca.com/huasca-de-ocampo.md): Huasca de Ocampo, in the mountains of Hidalgo, was the first town named a Pueblo Mágico, in 2001. Nearby are the Basaltic Prisms, tall columns of rock with waterfalls running over them, and old silver haciendas. - [Huichapan](https://puebloteca.com/huichapan.md): Huichapan is a small town in the rolling hills of the Valle del Mezquital, in western Hidalgo. It is the seat of its municipality and has its own Museum of Archaeology and History, a good starting point for understanding the area. Visitors come for a quiet historic center and a town closely tied to the story of Mexican independence. - [Metztitlán](https://puebloteca.com/metztitlan.md): Metztitlán, "place of the moon" in Nahuatl, is a small town in Hidalgo's Sierra Baja, set inside the Barranca de Metztitlán Biosphere Reserve. Above it rises the 16th-century Augustinian monastery of the Santos Reyes, with a Plateresque facade, a barrel-vaulted church, altarpieces and mural paintings; friars still live there. The town also keeps La Tercena, a rare 16th-century civic building with polychrome murals. The feast of the Virgen del Refugio is held on July 4. - [Mineral del Chico](https://puebloteca.com/mineral-del-chico.md): Mineral del Chico is a tiny mining-era village in the Sierra de Pachuca, Hidalgo, part of the Comarca Minera region and next door to El Chico National Park. Its main square is anchored by the neoclassical Purísima Concepción parish, with a quarry stone facade and a public clock added in 1888. People come for the mountain setting, the forest, and the calm of a town that locals simply call El Chico. - [Real del Monte](https://puebloteca.com/real-del-monte.md): A cold, high mining town in Hidalgo, shaped by the Cornish miners who arrived in the 19th century. They left behind steep-roofed houses, an English cemetery, and the paste, the local take on the Cornish pasty. - [Tecozautla](https://puebloteca.com/tecozautla.md): Tecozautla is a small town in the Mezquital Valley of Hidalgo, known for its hot springs and for the fruit grown around it. The center has the church and former convent of Santiago Apóstol, built in the 1690s, and a neoclassical clock tower inaugurated in 1910. Every July 25 the patron saint's day becomes the Feria de la Fruta, with crafts, rides, rodeos and displays of local fruit. Expect barbacoa, mole with turkey and, in season, escamoles and maguey worms. - [Zempoala](https://puebloteca.com/zempoala.md): Zempoala is a small town on the Apan plains of Hidalgo, in the heart of pulque country. Its Franciscan church and convent of Todos los Santos date from the 16th century and form part of the Padre Tembleque aqueduct system, a UNESCO World Heritage site whose tall stone arches cross the countryside nearby. Travelers come to see the aqueduct and convent, visit old pulque haciendas among the maguey fields, and taste the drink where it is made. - [Zimapán](https://puebloteca.com/zimapan.md): Zimapán is a mountain town in western Hidalgo, set in dry, rugged country where the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt meets the Sierra Madre Oriental. It is an old mining town with a colonial center, and it serves as a gateway to the canyons and sierra of the Moctezuma River basin. Travelers come for the quiet plaza and parish church, the mining heritage, and the mountain scenery around it. ### Jalisco - [Ajijic](https://puebloteca.com/ajijic.md): Ajijic sits on the north shore of Lake Chapala, Mexico's largest lake. With a mild climate year-round, it has one of the largest communities of foreign retirees in Mexico, along with murals, galleries, and a lakeside malecón. - [Cocula](https://puebloteca.com/cocula.md): Cocula is a farm town about an hour southwest of Guadalajara, and it calls itself the cradle of mariachi. Arches decorated with guitars and violins welcome you at the entrance, and the music is everywhere, from the plaza to the song that Jorge Negrete made famous. Around it stretch fields of sugar cane, agave and maize. Visitors come to hear mariachi where it began, walk the center and eat well in an unpretentious Jalisco town. - [Lagos de Moreno](https://puebloteca.com/lagos-de-moreno.md): Lagos de Moreno is a city in the highlands of Los Altos de Jalisco whose historic center and old bridge are part of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro World Heritage listing. The pink stone Baroque parish of the Assumption towers over streets of mansions, a former Capuchin convent that is now the Casa de la Cultura, and the Calvario church. Nicknamed the Athens of Jalisco for its writers, it is also dairy and horse country, with charrería, cheeses and milk sweets, hot spring resorts and hacienda hotels nearby. - [Mascota](https://puebloteca.com/mascota.md): Mascota is a mountain town in the western sierra of Jalisco, a little over 100 km inland from Puerto Vallarta. It sits in a valley ringed by hills of pine and oak where white-tailed deer still live; the old Nahuatl name means "place of deer and snakes." The 18th-century parish church, with a tower clock shipped from Paris in the 1870s, anchors the center. People come for the mild weather, the forested surroundings and the unhurried pace. - [Mazamitla](https://puebloteca.com/mazamitla.md): A mountain town in the pine forests of southern Jalisco, often nicknamed the Mexican Switzerland. Visitors from Guadalajara come for wooden cabins, cool weather, and hikes to the El Salto waterfall. - [San Sebastián del Oeste](https://puebloteca.com/san-sebastian-del-oeste.md): San Sebastián del Oeste is a tiny former mining town in the mountains of western Jalisco, under two hours by road from Puerto Vallarta. Its cut-stone and adobe buildings have changed little since the nineteenth century, and its church, first built in 1608, has Corinthian columns and frescoed vaults. People come up from the coast for the quiet streets, the restored haciendas nearby, and fiestas such as Saint Sebastian's on January 20. - [Sayula](https://puebloteca.com/sayula.md): Sayula is a traditional town about 100 km south of Guadalajara, with a lively main plaza, a handsome downtown church and several chapels. It is known for its cajeta, a milk caramel, and for a Carnaval with dancing, floats and street vendors. During holidays some downtown streets close to make room for a big open-air market. The writer Juan Rulfo's birth was registered here in 1917. - [Talpa de Allende](https://puebloteca.com/talpa-de-allende.md): Talpa de Allende is a small town in the mountains of western Jalisco and one of Mexico's major pilgrimage destinations. Pilgrims arrive throughout the year, many of them on foot, to visit the Virgin of the Rosary of Talpa in her basilica on the main square. Around the plaza, shops sell guava sweets and small figures made from chicle, two local specialties. - [Tapalpa](https://puebloteca.com/tapalpa.md): Tapalpa is a highland town in Jalisco with white houses, red roofs, and wooden balconies. Nearby are Las Piedrotas, huge boulders scattered across a green valley, along with forests and cabins. - [Temacapulín](https://puebloteca.com/temacapulin.md): Temacapulín, or Temaca to locals, is a tiny village in the Altos de Jalisco, beside the Río Verde and about five kilometers north of Cañadas de Obregón. Its name comes from the Nahuatl word for a thermal bath, a nod to the warm springs in the area. The village is centered on the Basilica of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, and it is reached by a single rural road, which keeps it very quiet. - [Tequila](https://puebloteca.com/tequila.md): The town that gave the drink its name sits among blue agave fields below the Tequila volcano. Visitors tour historic distilleries, ride the tequila trains from Guadalajara, and wander a compact center built around the parish church. The surrounding agave landscape is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. - [Tlaquepaque](https://puebloteca.com/tlaquepaque.md): Part of greater Guadalajara, Tlaquepaque is known for pottery, blown glass, and craft galleries along its pedestrian streets. Mariachi bands play at El Parián, a large arcade of restaurants around a central bandstand. ### Michoacán - [Angangueo](https://puebloteca.com/angangueo.md): A narrow mining town squeezed into a valley in eastern Michoacán, and a base for visiting the monarch butterfly sanctuaries in winter. - [Cotija](https://puebloteca.com/cotija.md): Cotija de la Paz is a ranching town in the hills of western Michoacán, close to the Jalisco line, and the home of the salty, crumbly aged cheese that carries its name across Mexico and beyond. Tasting and buying queso Cotija where it is made is the main reason to visit. The town has a strongly Catholic character and a tidy center of churches and old houses, and it is the birthplace of Saint Rafael Guízar y Valencia. - [Cuitzeo](https://puebloteca.com/cuitzeo.md): Cuitzeo del Porvenir sits on the north shore of the wide, shallow Lake Cuitzeo, about half an hour from Morelia. It is a quiet town of narrow streets and white facades, built around the 16th-century Augustinian monastery of Santa María Magdalena with its finely carved Plateresque front. Visitors come for the monastery and its print museum, the lakeside views, reed baskets and mats, and plates of charales, corundas and uchepos. - [Jiquilpan](https://puebloteca.com/jiquilpan.md): Jiquilpan is a small city in northwestern Michoacán, close to the Jalisco border, and the birthplace of President Lázaro Cárdenas. Its surprise is the public library, a former chapel whose walls José Clemente Orozco covered with murals. There is also a 16th century Franciscan convent, a museum on the life of Cárdenas, the house museum of artist Feliciano Béjar and the shady Cuauhtémoc forest park, where the stone Casita de Piedra hosts a workshop that raises silkworms and weaves silk rebozos. - [Paracho](https://puebloteca.com/paracho.md): Paracho is a Purépecha town on the highland plateau of Michoacán, known across Mexico as the place where guitars are made. Workshops and music shops line its streets, and many let you watch luthiers build guitars, violins, vihuelas, guitarrones and mandolins by hand. Other artisans carve wooden toys, furniture and kitchenware. The big date is the National Guitar Fair in early August, centered on the Casa de la Cultura. - [Pátzcuaro](https://puebloteca.com/patzcuaro.md): Pátzcuaro sits near the lake of the same name in the highlands of Michoacán, with big plazas, adobe-and-tile buildings painted white and red, and deep Purépecha roots. It is one of the most famous places in Mexico to experience Day of the Dead. - [Santa Clara del Cobre](https://puebloteca.com/santa-clara-del-cobre.md): Santa Clara del Cobre is a town of white walls and red tile roofs 18 km from Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, where much of the population works copper by hand. In its many workshops, teams of smiths hammer red-hot metal on the anvil into pots, vases and sculpture. Visitors browse the copper shops around the kiosk plaza, itself roofed in copper, see the Copper Museum, and come in August for the National Copper Fair. - [Tacámbaro](https://puebloteca.com/tacambaro.md): Tacámbaro is a town in central Michoacán whose Purépecha name means roughly 'place of palms'. It grew up around an Augustinian chapel and convent founded in the 16th century, and its center still follows the street plan laid out in colonial times. It carries the official title of Heroic city for a battle fought here under General Nicolás de Régules, and travelers come for its historic center and relaxed small-town pace. - [Tlalpujahua](https://puebloteca.com/tlalpujahua.md): A former gold-mining town in the mountains of Michoacán, now known across Mexico for making handmade glass Christmas ornaments. - [Tzintzuntzan](https://puebloteca.com/tzintzuntzan.md): Tzintzuntzan is a small town on the shore of Lake Pátzcuaro that was once the capital of the Purépecha state. Above it stand the yácatas, five stepped platforms with rounded ends that look out over the lake, and in the center is a 16th-century Franciscan monastery complex with a huge atrium. People come for the ruins, the pottery and embroidery, the Señor del Rescate festival, and the Day of the Dead vigil in the cemetery. ### Morelos - [Tepoztlán](https://puebloteca.com/tepoztlan.md): Tepoztlán lies beneath dramatic cliffs an hour or so from Mexico City. A steep hike leads to the small Tepozteco pyramid above town, and weekends bring a busy market, a 16th-century convent, and a reputation as a spiritual retreat. - [Tlaltizapán](https://puebloteca.com/tlaltizapan.md): Tlaltizapán de Zapata is a warm-country town in Morelos, set on a pale hill that explains its Nahuatl name, on white land. It is best known as the place where Emiliano Zapata kept his headquarters during the Revolution, and for the 16th-century Dominican monastery of San Miguel Arcángel. Around it are spring-fed swimming spots and river parks such as Las Estacas, Los Sauces and Santa Isabel, plus old sugar haciendas, one now a hotel. - [Tlayacapan](https://puebloteca.com/tlayacapan.md): Tlayacapan is a farming town in northeastern Morelos with stone-paved streets, red tile roofs, old mansions and stone bridges over its many ravines. The huge Augustinian monastery of San Juan Bautista, a World Heritage site with 16th-century frescoes and a museum, rises above everything else, and chapels dot the neighborhoods. The town is known as the birthplace of the Chinelos dance, for its celebrated Banda de Tlayacapan and for its clay pottery. - [Xochitepec](https://puebloteca.com/xochitepec.md): Xochitepec is a warm town just south of Cuernavaca whose Nahuatl name means on the hill of flowers. Its center has the church of San Juan Evangelista, begun by Franciscans in the 16th century, and a weekend crafts market in the zócalo. Nearby are old sugar haciendas, the arched aqueduct of Santa Catarina in Chiconcuac, and spring-fed water parks such as Palo Bolero with its sulfur waters and grotto. The patron saint fiestas run from December 27 into January with chinelos and jaripeos. ### Nayarit - [Ahuacatlán](https://puebloteca.com/ahuacatlan.md): Ahuacatlán, whose name means place of avocados, is a farming town in southern Nayarit on the old road between Guadalajara and the coast. It is a calm, working place surrounded by fields of lime, sugarcane, and agave; the area falls within the tequila denomination of origin and also produces honey. The surroundings hold traces of a very old past, from shaft tombs to the petroglyphs at La Campana and El Terrero. - [Amatlán de Cañas](https://puebloteca.com/amatlan-de-canas.md): Amatlán de Cañas is a small town in the south of Nayarit and the seat of the municipality of the same name. It is a quiet, rural corner of the state, and people in the region know it above all for its hot springs. It joined the Pueblos Mágicos program in 2023. - [Compostela](https://puebloteca.com/compostela.md): Compostela is an old colonial town in the hills of southern Nayarit, inland from the beaches of the Riviera Nayarit. Its centerpiece is the parish of Santiago Apóstol, also known as the church of the Señor de la Misericordia, whose feast fills the town from late November into December. Visitors walk the plaza, swim at the El Molino spring pool, see the old train station and the ruined hacienda of the Countess of Miravalle, and drink locally grown coffee. A craft and food fair takes over on the first Sunday of each month. - [Ixtlán del Río](https://puebloteca.com/ixtlan-del-rio.md): Ixtlán del Río is a town in southern Nayarit and the seat of the municipality of the same name, on the road between Guadalajara and Tepic. Its main draw is the archaeological site of Los Toriles, just outside town, known for a circular temple. The center is an easy place to pause, walk the plaza and eat before continuing through the region. - [Jala](https://puebloteca.com/jala.md): Jala is a small town in southern Nayarit at the foot of Ceboruco, one of Mexico's active volcanoes. Its center is dominated by the Basílica Lateranense de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, built in pink, green and yellow quarry stone. Visitors walk the old streets to look at the architecture and then head up the road and trails of the volcano, where lava fields and forest make for an unusual landscape. - [Mexcaltitán](https://puebloteca.com/mexcaltitan.md): A tiny, round island village in a lagoon in Nayarit. In the rainy season its streets can flood, and people get around by boat. - [Puerto Balleto](https://puebloteca.com/puerto-balleto.md): Puerto Balleto is one of Mexico's few island towns, set on a bay on the east side of Isla María Madre, the largest of the Islas Marías, about 128 km off the coast of San Blas. For more than a century it was the main settlement of a federal penal colony. Today visitors arrive by ferry to find whitewashed walls, tiled roofs and cobbled streets running from the dock to the parish church, surrounded by a protected biosphere reserve of dry tropical forest. - [San Blas](https://puebloteca.com/san-blas.md): An old Pacific port in Nayarit surrounded by mangroves and estuaries. San Blas is known for birdwatching, boat trips to the La Tovara spring, long surf beaches, and the ruins of a Spanish fort above town. - [Sayulita](https://puebloteca.com/sayulita.md): A small, colorful surf town on the Riviera Nayarit north of Puerto Vallarta. Sayulita has a gentle beach break popular with beginners, a busy plaza, and streets strung with papel picado. ### Nuevo León - [Bustamante](https://puebloteca.com/bustamante.md): Bustamante is a small town in northern Nuevo León, set where the dry plains meet the mountains. It is best known for the Grutas de Bustamante, a large cave system in the sierra above town, and for its traditional bread. It is one of the few places in the state included in the Pueblos Mágicos program. - [General Terán](https://puebloteca.com/general-teran.md): General Terán is a farming town in the citrus country of Nuevo León, 17 kilometers from Montemorelos. Orange groves, cattle and goat ranches surround it, and the town is known locally for cabrito, cheese and fresh produce. Five kilometers away is Sabino Gordo, a recreation area around a huge, very old cypress and a spring that does not run dry. There is fishing at the Los Cristales reservoir and rock paintings at Loma del Muerto and Monte Huma. - [General Zaragoza](https://puebloteca.com/general-zaragoza.md): General Zaragoza is a small town in Nuevo León and the seat of the municipality of the same name. It joined the Pueblos Mágicos program in July 2023, one of the newest additions in the state. It is a quiet place, far from the bustle of Monterrey, suited to travelers who like small-town plazas and the outdoors. - [Linares](https://puebloteca.com/linares.md): Linares is a small city in the citrus belt of central Nuevo León, best known across Mexico for its glorias, soft candies of burnt goat or cow milk and pecans. The center follows a neat grid around a plaza where the municipal band plays on Thursdays and Sundays, flanked by the cathedral, the 1896 town hall and the French neoclassical Casino. Old houses of sillar stone line the nearby streets. In July and August the Villaseca fair brings cavalcades, charreadas and the town's famous drum and clarinet groups. - [Santiago](https://puebloteca.com/santiago.md): Villa de Santiago sits in a green valley at the foot of the Sierra Madre Oriental, a short drive from Monterrey. It is the classic weekend escape for people from the city: a small historic center, the La Boca reservoir for boating and lakeside meals, and the Cola de Caballo waterfall up in the canyon. The surrounding sierra has apple-growing villages, and the area gets noticeably more rain than Monterrey, which keeps it lush. ### Oaxaca - [Capulálpam de Méndez](https://puebloteca.com/capulalpam-de-mendez.md): Capulálpam de Méndez is a Zapotec mountain town in Oaxaca's Sierra Norte, surrounded by community-protected pine and oak forest. Its 16th-century church of San Mateo keeps a carved wooden ceiling and large hand-carved altarpieces, and the streets are lined with traditional houses. Visitors come for the Traditional Medicine Center, where local healers offer limpias, massages, herbal remedies, and temazcal baths, and for brass band music, mole, pan de yema, tepache, and family-distilled mezcal. - [Huautla](https://puebloteca.com/huautla.md): Huautla de Jiménez is a Mazatec town high in the Sierra Mazateca of northern Oaxaca. It is known around the world for María Sabina, the Mazatec healer who used sacred mushrooms in her ceremonies and drew outside visitors from the mid-20th century on. Today a statue on the main street honors her, the house where she lived is a museum, and a cultural festival in July looks back on the town's healing traditions. Religious feasts here blend Catholic and indigenous elements. - [Juquila](https://puebloteca.com/juquila.md): Santa Catarina Juquila is a mountain town in the foothills of the Sierra Madre del Sur, inland from Puerto Escondido on Oaxaca's coast region. It is one of Mexico's major pilgrimage destinations: its sanctuary keeps the Virgin of Juquila, an image only about 30 centimeters tall, and thousands of devotees arrive from across Oaxaca and beyond. The town is also a center of the Chatino people, and the surrounding hills produce coffee. - [Mazunte](https://puebloteca.com/mazunte.md): A laid-back beach village on the coast of Oaxaca, once a sea-turtle hunting center and now home to the Mexican Turtle Center. Visitors come for the beaches, the sunset walk to Punta Cometa, and whale and dolphin watching. - [Mitla](https://puebloteca.com/mitla.md): Mitla, in the Oaxaca Valley, surrounds a Zapotec archaeological site known for its unique geometric stone mosaics. The town is also a center for weaving and mezcal. - [Teposcolula](https://puebloteca.com/teposcolula.md): San Pedro y San Pablo Teposcolula is a quiet town in the heart of Oaxaca's Mixteca region, known in Mixtec as Yucundaa. Visitors come for its 16th-century Dominican convent and large open chapel, and for the hilltop ruins of the Mixtec city that came before the town. It is a good stop for travelers interested in how the Mixtec and Spanish worlds met. ### Puebla - [Atlixco](https://puebloteca.com/atlixco.md): Atlixco lies below the Popocatépetl volcano in the state of Puebla and is known for its flower nurseries and mild climate. A hilltop chapel on the Cerro de San Miguel overlooks town, and its zócalo is ringed with cafés. - [Chignahuapan](https://puebloteca.com/chignahuapan.md): Chignahuapan is a mountain town in Puebla's Sierra Norte, surrounded by pine and oak forest. It is known across Mexico for its blown-glass Christmas ornaments, made in more than 200 workshops that you can visit and shop in year-round. In the center, a brightly painted wooden kiosk with a fountain underneath faces the colorful 16th-century church of Santiago Apóstol. Nearby are hot spring resorts, the Quetzalapan waterfall and a basilica that holds a 12-meter carved wooden Virgin. - [Cholula](https://puebloteca.com/cholula.md): Cholula is home to the Great Pyramid, the largest pyramid by volume in the world, topped by the church of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios with the Popocatépetl volcano behind it. The town is famous for its many churches and has a lively student scene next to the city of Puebla. - [Cuetzalan](https://puebloteca.com/cuetzalan.md): A misty mountain town in Puebla's Sierra Norte with steep cobbled streets and a strong Nahua and Totonac culture. The Sunday market fills the center, voladores fly from a tall pole beside the church, and waterfalls and caves dot the green hills around it. - [Huauchinango](https://puebloteca.com/huauchinango.md): Huauchinango is a city in the rugged Sierra Norte de Puebla, surrounded by pine forest, ravines, rivers and waterfalls. Its historic center has red-tiled pitched roofs and iron balconies around a garden-filled Plaza de Armas, next to the wide dome of the Asunción church and the old Augustinian monastery that houses the venerated Señor del Santo Entierro. The area grows azaleas and other flowers, celebrated each Lent at the nine-day Feria de las Flores with flower carpets, processions and traditional dances. - [Huejotzingo](https://puebloteca.com/huejotzingo.md): Huejotzingo is a small city just northwest of Puebla, on the plain below the Iztaccíhuatl volcano. Its centerpiece is the 16th-century Franciscan monastery of San Miguel Arcángel, a World Heritage site with a walled atrium and four corner chapels. The town is known for its apple cider and fruit preserves, and for a four-day carnival in which about 2,000 residents in costume stage mock battles recalling the Battle of Puebla and other local stories. - [Pahuatlán](https://puebloteca.com/pahuatlan.md): Pahuatlán sits in the mountains of northern Puebla, where Otomí, Nahua and mestizo communities live side by side. It is known for amate, a bark paper still made by hand with a pre-Hispanic technique, especially in the Otomí village of San Pablito. Visitors come for the mountain scenery, the simple church of Santiago Apóstol, locally grown coffee, and a kitchen full of peanuts, wild greens and edible flowers. - [Tetela de Ocampo](https://puebloteca.com/tetela-de-ocampo.md): Tetela de Ocampo is a mountain town in Puebla's Sierra Norte, in a region where Nahua communities still live. Its plaza is framed by the 1808 parish of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción and a French-style municipal palace that houses the Los Tres Juanes museum. A hilltop cross gives wide views of the town and surrounding peaks, and nearby outings include the Acocomoca caves, the Aconco waterfalls and the old mining village of La Cañada. - [Teziutlán](https://puebloteca.com/teziutlan.md): Teziutlán is a highland city in the northeastern sierra of Puebla, close to the Veracruz border and often called the foggiest city in Mexico. Its Nahuatl name means place of hail, which says something about the cool, damp mountain weather. The city prospered in the railway age and is the birthplace of a president, a celebrated painter and a guitarist of Trío Los Panchos. - [Tlatlauquitepec](https://puebloteca.com/tlatlauquitepec.md): Tlatlauquitepec is a mountain town in Puebla's Sierra Norte, watched over by the Cerro Cabezón, the hill behind its Nahuatl name, which is read as either the hill that colors or the hill that burns. Its Franciscan convent of Santa María de la Asunción dates from 1531 and now serves as the parish house. The surrounding country is rugged and green, dropping from high forest toward the Apulco river and the La Soledad dam. - [Xicotepec](https://puebloteca.com/xicotepec.md): Xicotepec de Juárez is a coffee town in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, ringed by green hills and watered by springs and streams that run through it. In a ravine in town is La Xochipila, an old ceremonial center tied to Xochipilli, the god of flowers, spring, and music. Visitors stroll the flower-filled central garden, shop for jewelry made from coffee beans, and taste the local coffee along with fruit like macadamia, mamey, and passion fruit. - [Zacatlán](https://puebloteca.com/zacatlan.md): Zacatlán de las Manzanas is a highland town in the Sierra Norte de Puebla surrounded by apple, plum, and pear orchards. It is known for hard apple cider and fruit wines, for its clockmakers and clock museum, and for a 16th-century Franciscan monastery beside the main plaza. Outside town is the Valle de las Piedras Encimadas, a park of strangely stacked rock formations. Nahua and Totonac communities nearby keep their embroidered dress and language. ### Querétaro - [Amealco](https://puebloteca.com/amealco.md): Amealco is a cool highland town in the south of Querétaro and the home of the Otomí rag doll, stitched from poplin and bright ribbons by women of the surrounding communities. The Doll Museum and the crafts house show them alongside embroidery and weaving. Around the plaza stand the neoclassical church of Santa María and a market where turkey mole is the local dish, and beyond town there are forests for camping, mountain bike trails on Cerro de los Gallos, and Otomí villages such as Santiago Mexquititlán and San Ildefonso Tultepec. - [Bernal](https://puebloteca.com/bernal.md): Bernal sits at the foot of the Peña de Bernal, one of the tallest monoliths in the world, which towers over its colorful streets. Visitors hike partway up the rock, eat gorditas in the plaza, and explore the surrounding Querétaro wine and cheese country. - [Cadereyta](https://puebloteca.com/cadereyta.md): Cadereyta de Montes sits at the edge of Querétaro's semi-desert, where the plains begin to rise toward the Sierra Gorda. Its main plaza is anchored by the church of San Pedro and San Pablo, and the town is known for its cactus and desert plant collections, including the long-established Finca Schmoll greenhouse and several botanical gardens. There is also a planetarium, old haciendas in the countryside, and a local cuisine that people travel for. - [Jalpan](https://puebloteca.com/jalpan.md): Jalpan de Serra sits in the heart of Querétaro's Sierra Gorda, a green and mountainous ecological zone. Its centerpiece is the Santiago Apóstol mission, the first of the five Franciscan missions of the Sierra Gorda that UNESCO listed as World Heritage in 2003, with a facade where Pame and Catholic imagery mix. The tree-filled plaza in front is the town's meeting place, and across the street a 16th century fort houses the Sierra Gorda history museum. Jalpan is also the usual base for visiting the other missions. - [Pinal de Amoles](https://puebloteca.com/pinal-de-amoles.md): Pinal de Amoles is a small mountain town high in Querétaro's Sierra Gorda, inside the biosphere reserve. Its narrow cobbled streets climb and twist past houses painted red, ochre and yellow with bright balconies, and fog often rolls in from the surrounding pine forest. People come for cabins in the woods, canyons and waterfalls, the Sunday tianguis, and local food like cecina, pan de pulque and fruit liqueurs. - [San Joaquín](https://puebloteca.com/san-joaquin.md): San Joaquín is a small mountain town high in Querétaro's Sierra Gorda, where brightly painted houses stand among pines and oaks. It is known for its mining past and as the home of huapango: every April since 1970 it has hosted the National Huapango Contest. Visitors hike, bike and camp at Campo Alegre, walk to the Maravillas waterfalls, tour the Los Herrera cave, and explore the Ranas archaeological site. - [Tequisquiapan](https://puebloteca.com/tequisquiapan.md): A colonial town in Querétaro with a pink-stone plaza and church at its center. It is a hub for the region's wine and cheese route and is known for wicker crafts and hot-air balloon flights. ### Quintana Roo - [Bacalar](https://puebloteca.com/bacalar.md): Bacalar sits on the shore of the Lagoon of Seven Colors, a long freshwater lake whose shades of blue come from its white limestone bottom and changing depths. Days here are spent kayaking, sailing, and swimming from wooden docks, with an 18th-century fort overlooking the water. - [Cozumel](https://puebloteca.com/cozumel.md): Mexico's largest Caribbean island, off the coast of Playa del Carmen, and one of the world's best-known scuba-diving destinations thanks to its coral reefs. The town of San Miguel is a major cruise-ship port. - [Isla Mujeres](https://puebloteca.com/isla-mujeres.md): A small, narrow island a short ferry ride from Cancún. Isla Mujeres is known for the calm turquoise water of Playa Norte, golf-cart sightseeing, snorkeling, and the rocky cliffs of Punta Sur at its southern tip. - [Tulum](https://puebloteca.com/tulum.md): Tulum pairs a walled Maya city on a cliff above the Caribbean with white-sand beaches and nearby cenotes. Once a quiet backpacker stop, it is now one of Mexico's best-known beach destinations, with a town center inland and a hotel strip along the coast. ### San Luis Potosí - [Aquismón](https://puebloteca.com/aquismon.md): Aquismón is a small town in the Huasteca Potosina, the green, humid eastern edge of San Luis Potosí, where about a third of residents identify as Indigenous. It is the starting point for the Sótano de las Golondrinas, the enormous pit cave where flocks of birds spiral out at dawn, and for other natural sites in the surrounding municipality. The town itself is compact and unhurried, a place to arrange guides, eat, and sleep before an early start. - [Ciudad del Maíz](https://puebloteca.com/ciudad-del-maiz.md): Ciudad del Maíz is a small, unhurried town in the east of San Luis Potosí and the seat of the municipality of the same name. It was named a Pueblo Mágico in 2023. Life here moves around the central plaza and the parish church, and the town serves as a starting point for exploring the surrounding countryside of hills, ranchland and rural communities. - [Real de Catorce](https://puebloteca.com/real-de-catorce.md): A former silver-mining boomtown high in the desert mountains of San Luis Potosí, reached through a long one-lane tunnel. Partly abandoned for decades, its stone streets and ruins give it a ghost-town feel. It is also a pilgrimage site and lies near Wirikuta, sacred land of the Wixárika people. - [Santa María del Río](https://puebloteca.com/santa-maria-del-rio.md): Santa María del Río is a small town about 46 km from the city of San Luis Potosí, known across Mexico for its rebozos. Local weavers make fine shawls by hand, and they are traditionally sold with a rebocera, a small wooden box decorated with inlay work. Visitors come to watch the weaving, shop in the workshops, and walk a quiet town where trade, crafts and farming still set the pace. - [Tierranueva](https://puebloteca.com/tierranueva.md): Tierranueva is a small, quiet town in the south of San Luis Potosí, about 65 km from the state capital and close to the Guanajuato line. People come for its flagstone-paved streets, its main plaza and the nearby La Muñeca reservoir. The calendar is full of religious fiestas, led by the celebration of patron saint San Nicolás de Tolentino in early September. - [Xilitla](https://puebloteca.com/xilitla.md): A small town in the rainy mountains of the Huasteca Potosina, famous for Las Pozas, the surrealist sculpture garden that Edward James built in the jungle. Concrete staircases, arches, and columns rise among waterfalls and pools. ### Sinaloa - [Cosalá](https://puebloteca.com/cosala.md): Cosalá is an old silver-mining town in the foothills of the Sierra Madre in Sinaloa, a couple of hours from Culiacán. Its cobbled streets and low colonial houses lead to the 18th-century church of Santa Úrsula and a small Museum of Mining and History with old photographs, tools, carriages and mineral samples. Outside town are the Vado Hondo waterfall and swimming holes, the Gruta México cave with its stalactites, and reservoirs known for largemouth bass fishing. - [El Fuerte](https://puebloteca.com/el-fuerte.md): A colonial town on the El Fuerte River in northern Sinaloa, and a common starting point for the Chepe train into the Copper Canyon. - [El Rosario](https://puebloteca.com/el-rosario.md): El Rosario is a small former mining town in southern Sinaloa, about an hour south of Mazatlán on Highway 15. Its main sight is the church of Nuestra Señora del Rosario, whose gilded Baroque altarpiece reflects the silver and gold that came out of the ground here. You can also visit the museum dedicated to singer Lola Beltrán, who was born here, walk the old center and the Spanish cemetery, and continue to the beaches of El Caimanero. - [Mocorito](https://puebloteca.com/mocorito.md): Mocorito is a small colonial town in northwestern Sinaloa with old mansions, narrow lanes full of ghost stories, and a church whose facade mixes rough quarry stone and brick. It is known across the state for its food, especially chilorio, chorizo, machaca and jamoncillo, and for banda music. Visitors stroll the plazuela, cool off under the old poplars along the Mocorito River, and time trips for Carnival or the week-long Purísima Concepción fair in December. - [San Ignacio](https://puebloteca.com/san-ignacio.md): San Ignacio, also called San Ignacio de Loyola, is a small riverside town in southern Sinaloa, about 100 km from Mazatlán. It grew up beside the Piaxtla River as a Jesuit foundation and a supply point for the mines in the nearby sierra. Visitors come for the early nineteenth-century church, the central plaza, the Cristo de la Mesa sculpture, the river itself, and the natural hot springs at Aguacaliente. ### Sonora - [Magdalena de Kino](https://puebloteca.com/magdalena-de-kino.md): Magdalena de Kino is a town on the Magdalena River in northern Sonora, about 80 kilometers south of the border at Nogales. Its centerpiece is the Plaza Monumental, framed by arcades of shops and restaurants, where a crypt displays the remains of the Jesuit missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino beside the church of Santa María Magdalena. Pilgrims come to the chapel of San Francisco Javier to try to lift the saint's reclining image. The area is known for quince and other fruit, and the San Ignacio mission is a short drive north. - [San Carlos](https://puebloteca.com/san-carlos.md): San Carlos is a beach town on the Sea of Cortez near Guaymas, Sonora, where desert mountains drop straight into clear, shallow bays. The twin-peaked Cerro Tetakawi stands over everything, and the scenic lookout beside it has one of the best ocean views in the region. People come to dive and snorkel around San Pedro Nolasco Island, sail, fish for dorado and sailfish, hike Nacapule Canyon, and spend the winter; many Americans and Canadians do. - [Ures](https://puebloteca.com/ures.md): Ures is a small, old city in the Sonora River valley of central Sonora, once the state capital. Its center gathers around the Plaza Zaragoza with its bronze sculptures, the San Miguel Arcángel church, a regional folk museum, and old haciendas nearby. Travelers stop for the food as much as the history: jamoncillo milk candy, sugarcane sweets, coyotas, flour tortillas, carne con chile, and the local bacanora. - [Álamos](https://puebloteca.com/alamos.md): A colonial silver town in the foothills of southern Sonora, with arcaded streets, restored mansions, and a music festival each January. ### Tabasco - [Frontera](https://puebloteca.com/frontera.md): Frontera is a river port in Tabasco, 78 kilometers northeast of Villahermosa, close to where the Grijalva River meets the Gulf of Mexico. It is the state's main fishing center, known for shrimp, snook and mojarra, and the long Frontera bridge carries the coastal highway toward Ciudad del Carmen across the river. People come for the seafood, the river and coastal scenery, and the history of the first encounters between the Maya Chontal and the Spanish. - [Tapijulapa](https://puebloteca.com/tapijulapa.md): Tapijulapa is a village in the Tabasco highlands where the green waters of the Oxolotán and Amatán rivers meet. Its cobbled streets are lined with white houses, red tile roofs and flowerpots, and the 17th-century church of Santiago Apóstol looks over everything from a hilltop. Visitors swim in the rivers, take a short boat ride to Villa Luz for its waterfalls, sulfur pools and cave, ride the zip line over the river, and visit the Kolem Jaa ecotourism park. - [Teapa](https://puebloteca.com/teapa.md): Teapa is one of the oldest towns in Tabasco, set in the foothills of the state's southern sierra beside the stony river that gave it its name. It grew from two Zoque villages, Teapan and Tecomaxiacan, and still has colonial churches whose walls were built with river stones in the early 1700s. Officially titled a Heroic town, it served three times as provisional capital of Tabasco, and it makes a good base for the rivers and hills of the Tabasco highlands. ### Tamaulipas - [Mier](https://puebloteca.com/mier.md): Mier is a small border town in Tamaulipas on the Rio Grande, just south of Falcon Dam. Its streets keep 18th-century buildings from the colonial province of Nuevo Santander, including the parish of the Inmaculada Concepción, the 1835 chapel of San Juan and the thick-walled house tied to the 1842 battle with Texan forces, which has its own museum. Local potters work several kinds of clay into pots and planters, and the cooking is northern: flour tortillas, cabrito, machacado with egg and empanadas of cajeta or pumpkin. - [Tula](https://puebloteca.com/tula.md): Ciudad Tula, founded in 1617, is usually considered the oldest town in Tamaulipas. Its streets keep much architecture from the Porfirio Díaz era, when it was one of the state's leading cities, and it is the home of the cuera, the fringed leather jacket that is Tamaulipas's traditional dress. Nearby are the Tammapul archaeological site with its large pyramid, El Cuizillo, the pilgrimage site of El Contadero, and the lagoon where locals relax. ### Tlaxcala - [Huamantla](https://puebloteca.com/huamantla.md): Huamantla is a small city on the high plain east of Tlaxcala, near the Malinche volcano, centered on the gardens and old kiosk of Parque Juárez. Its streets keep colonial and Porfirian houses with iron balconies, plus a 16th-century Franciscan monastery and the parish of San Luis Obispo. It is best known for its August festivities for Our Lady of Charity: on "the night no one sleeps" residents lay kilometers of sawdust and flower carpets, followed by the Huamantlada bull run. - [Ixtenco](https://puebloteca.com/ixtenco.md): Ixtenco is an Otomi farming town in southeastern Tlaxcala, set on an old lava flow at the foot of La Malinche volcano. Life centers on a plaza with the old town well and the parish of San Juan Bautista, whose gray stone bell tower is the tallest in the state. The community has kept customs such as the temazcal, embroidered dress and Carnival dances, and its big day is the feast of Saint John on June 24. Local cooking includes turkey in mole, red pipián and barbacoa. - [Tlaxco](https://puebloteca.com/tlaxco.md): Tlaxco is the main town of northern Tlaxcala, a high, cool place in a sierra of pine and fir forest near the Hidalgo border. Its name means place of the tlachiqueros, the people who scrape the maguey to make pulque, and the drink has long been tied to the area's haciendas. The well-kept historic center won a national restoration award in 2001, and its town hall was inaugurated by Porfirio Díaz in 1894. ### Veracruz - [Coatepec](https://puebloteca.com/coatepec.md): Coatepec is a coffee town in the misty hills a few kilometers from Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz. Locals sum it up with a line: we are coffee, cane, orchid, fog and mountain. The center is a grid of tile-roofed houses with interior patios around the parish of San Jerónimo, and the smell of roasting beans follows you down the street. People come to taste coffee at its source, buy orchids, visit old haciendas and escape the heat of the coast. - [Coscomatepec](https://puebloteca.com/coscomatepec.md): Coscomatepec, or Cosco to locals, is a market town in the high mountains of central Veracruz, on the lower slopes of the Pico de Orizaba, whose snowy cone shows on clear mornings. It is the trading center for the farming villages around it and is known for leatherwork and saddlery, wood-oven bread and hand-rolled cigars. In the first week of October the town reenacts the breaking of the 1813 siege, its proudest moment in the War of Independence. - [Córdoba](https://puebloteca.com/cordoba.md): Córdoba is a busy city in the coffee and sugar country of central Veracruz, at the foot of the Sierra Madre Oriental. Its heart is the Parque 21 de Mayo, a classic square with the church on one side, city hall on the other and arcades full of cafes in between. Under those arcades the treaty that sealed Mexico's independence was signed in 1821. People come for the history, a long coffee on the portales and the green mountain scenery around it. - [Naolinco](https://puebloteca.com/naolinco.md): Naolinco de Victoria is a small mountain city in the foothills of the Sierra de Chiconquiaco, 32 km by road from Xalapa. It is known for its leather goods and for the Naolinco River, which drops through ten named waterfalls, the tallest an 80-meter fall you can see from the town lookout. Traditions run deep here: the Moors and Christians dance for San Mateo in late September, and La Cantada on November 1, when people go house to house singing before the altars for the dead. - [Orizaba](https://puebloteca.com/orizaba.md): A city in the mountains of Veracruz near the Pico de Orizaba, the highest peak in Mexico. Orizaba is known for its riverside walk, a cable car up the Cerro del Borrego, and the Palacio de Hierro, an iron building brought from Belgium. - [Papantla](https://puebloteca.com/papantla.md): Papantla, in northern Veracruz, is the heart of the Totonac region and is known for vanilla and for the ritual of the Voladores, the flying dancers. The ancient city of El Tajín, with its Pyramid of the Niches, is nearby. - [Xico](https://puebloteca.com/xico.md): Xico sits on the lower slopes of the Cofre de Perote, 25 km from Xalapa, in a humid landscape of mountains and coffee farms. Its cobblestone streets lead to the parish of Santa María Magdalena, where thousands of dresses given to the patron saint are kept. Visitors walk to the Texolo and La Monja waterfalls, eat sweet mole xiqueño and xonequi bean soup, and sip morita and verde liqueurs. In July the town fills with sawdust carpets, a flower arch, dancers, and fireworks. - [Zozocolco](https://puebloteca.com/zozocolco.md): Zozocolco de Hidalgo is a Totonac town in the humid hills of northern Veracruz, 61 km south of Poza Rica. Its stone-paved streets and flagstone sidewalks climb to the 17th-century church of San Miguel Arcángel, fronted by a stone plaza with broad steps where the voladores perform from their pole. The big celebration is the feast of San Miguel on September 29, and the town is also known for its festival of handmade paper balloons in November. ### Yucatán - [Espita](https://puebloteca.com/espita.md): Espita is a town in northeastern Yucatán, about 50 kilometers from Valladolid and not far from Ek Balam and Tizimín. In the 19th century its maize and sugar haciendas made it prosperous enough to earn the nickname the Athens of Yucatán. The colonial church of San José anchors the center, and the biggest celebration runs from December 19 to 29 in honor of the Christ Child, with processions, guild dances, vaquerías and bullfights. - [Izamal](https://puebloteca.com/izamal.md): Known as the Yellow City, Izamal's center is painted almost entirely in golden yellow. The huge Franciscan convent of San Antonio de Padua was built on top of a Maya platform, and large pyramids such as Kinich Kakmó still rise among the town's streets. - [Maní](https://puebloteca.com/mani.md): Maní is a quiet Maya town about 90 kilometers southeast of Mérida, built around the massive 16th century Franciscan church and former convent of San Miguel Arcángel. It is known for poc chuc, pork marinated in sour orange and grilled over charcoal, and for some 30 meliponarios where families keep the stingless melipona bee for its prized honey. Local artisans embroider blouses, hipiles and ternos and weave hammocks. In 2021 it was recognized as a Best Tourism Village. - [Motul](https://puebloteca.com/motul.md): Motul is a small city about 45 km northeast of Mérida, in the heart of Yucatán's old henequen zone. It is best known as the birthplace of huevos motuleños, the classic Yucatecan breakfast dish, and of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, the governor whose name the city officially carries. Visitors come to eat, to see its colonial-era Franciscan monastery, and in July for the guild processions and vaquería held in honor of the Virgen del Carmen. - [Sisal](https://puebloteca.com/sisal.md): A small fishing village on the Gulf coast of Yucatán that was once the peninsula's main port. Today it is known for quiet beaches, mangroves, and flamingos. - [Tekax](https://puebloteca.com/tekax.md): Tekax is a town at the foot of Yucatán's low southern hills, 115 km from Mérida, and its Maya name means 'there in the forest'. The 17th-century church and former convent of San Juan Bautista anchors the center, and the hermitage of San Diego sits on a hill above town. The Puuc-style Maya site of Chacmultún is seven kilometers away. The food is classic Yucatecan: cochinita pibil, papadzules, queso relleno, venison pipián, and sweets made with squash seed, coconut and honey. - [Valladolid](https://puebloteca.com/valladolid.md): A relaxed colonial city in the middle of the Yucatán Peninsula, with pastel streets, the 16th-century convent of San Bernardino, and a cenote right in town. It is a popular base for visiting Chichén Itzá, Ek Balam, and many swimming cenotes. ### Zacatecas - [Guadalupe](https://puebloteca.com/guadalupe.md): Guadalupe sits right next to the city of Zacatecas and forms a single metropolitan area with it, but its historic center has a character of its own. The main draw is the former Franciscan Apostolic College of Our Lady of Guadalupe, an 18th-century missionary complex that is part of the UNESCO-listed Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. Visitors come to see the convent and its church, walk the old center, which the state has declared a historic city, and explore former haciendas such as Bernárdez. - [Jerez](https://puebloteca.com/jerez.md): Jerez, in Zacatecas, is known for its elegant 19th-century buildings, including the Hinojosa Theater, and for its spring fair. It was the birthplace of the poet Ramón López Velarde. - [Nochistlán](https://puebloteca.com/nochistlan.md): Nochistlán de Mejía is a small city in southern Zacatecas whose Nahuatl name means "place of cochineal". It is known as a land of musicians, home to dozens of bandas, mariachis and tambora groups, and as the first site of Guadalajara. Visitors come for its architecture and its festivals: the flour-and-confetti Papaqui in January honoring Saint Sebastian, the October fiestas, and the Sunday evening serenata in the garden plaza. - [Pinos](https://puebloteca.com/pinos.md): Pinos is an old mining town on the slope of the Sierra de Pinos, in the high desert of southeastern Zacatecas known as the Gran Tunal. It was a stop on the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the silver road north from Mexico City. The town is divided into four old neighborhoods, including one called Tlaxcala, and its Franciscan convent still stands. Around it spread wide plains of yucca and thorn scrub broken by rocky mesas. - [Sombrerete](https://puebloteca.com/sombrerete.md): Sombrerete is an old silver town in northwestern Zacatecas, set at the foot of the hat-shaped hill that gave it its name. Its colonial street plan survives, with wide streets, alleys and small plazas lined with carved stone churches such as the San Mateo monastery, Santo Domingo and San Juan Bautista. The historic center is part of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro World Heritage listing, and the rock formations of Sierra de Órganos National Park are a short trip away. - [Teúl de González Ortega](https://puebloteca.com/teul-de-gonzalez-ortega.md): Teúl de González Ortega is a small town in the far south of Zacatecas whose name comes from the Nahuatl word for god or sacred. Above it rises the Cerro del Teúl, an archaeological site that was a major Caxcan ceremonial center, with a main plaza and two pyramid platforms. In town, the 18th-century Sanctuary of Guadalupe recalls the Franciscan past. Teúl is also proud of its musicians, and blue agave is a growing local crop. - [Villanueva](https://puebloteca.com/villanueva.md): Villanueva is a colonial town in southern Zacatecas, set among farmland, hills, and rivers. Its center has the parish church of San Judas Tadeo and the Municipal Palace, and the surrounding area holds pre-Hispanic petroglyphs and old haciendas. The town is known as the birthplace of tamborazo, the drum-driven brass music of Zacatecas, and for wood and leather furniture. The liveliest time to visit is the San Judas Tadeo fair, October 20 to 28.