Calzada Fray Antonio de San Miguel and Fuente de las Tarascas

The Calzada Fray Antonio de San Miguel, also known as the Calzada de San Diego or de Guadalupe, is a wide pedestrian walkway on the east side of the historic centre. It was laid out in 1732 under Bishop Juan José de Escalona y Calatayud to link the city, then Valladolid, with the church of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which at the time stood out in the fields; the Santuario de Guadalupe, also called the Templo de San Diego, still closes its eastern end. Later in the century it was renovated and given cantera stone paving and stone benches, and it takes its name from Bishop Fray Antonio de San Miguel, who restored it and also paid for the rebuilding of the aqueduct in the 1780s. A row of ash trees shades its whole length, and it is lined with 18th- and 19th-century summer houses. Measured on OpenStreetMap it runs just under 500 m, from Avenida Acueducto to the small square in front of the sanctuary.

At the western end, where Avenida Madero meets Avenida Acueducto and the aqueduct arches end, stands the Fuente de las Tarascas, Morelia's best-known fountain. The first version, installed in 1931 and made by Antonio Silva Díaz and Benigno Lara, was a painted concrete group of three kneeling, bare-breasted women in blue rebozos holding up a basket of fruit. It drew criticism for its nudity, and in August 1965 the mayor had it taken away and replaced with a fountain known as El Huarache; the old figures ended up at the city's fairground. El Huarache was never liked, and in 1983 and 1984 the sculptor José Luis Padilla Retana made a new bronze group on the same theme, paid for with public donations and unveiled on 18 May 1984.

The bronze women are popularly identified as three Purépecha princesses of legend, Atzimba, Eréndira and Tzetzangari; their faces were modelled on a woman from the island of Yunuén in Lake Pátzcuaro. They lift a basket of regional produce, including apples, maize and avocados, as a sign of the land's abundance, and a replica was given to Buenos Aires in 1998. Just north of the fountain is the narrow Callejón del Romance, a pink-stone alley with fountains and lamps named after a poem about the city by the Morelia poet Lucas Ortiz.