Zamora

Zamora de Hidalgo is the third-largest city in Michoacán, with about 155,000 people in 2020, and it has grown together with neighbouring Jacona into a metropolitan area of more than 270,000. It sits at about 1,560 m on the flat, fertile Tziróndaro valley in the northwest of the state, 144 km from Morelia. Spanish settlers founded the town on 18 January 1574 on the orders of Viceroy Martín Enríquez and named it after Zamora in Spain. Miguel Hidalgo declared it a city on 21 November 1810, during the War of Independence, and 'de Hidalgo' was added to its name in his honour in 1953. It became the seat of a Catholic diocese in 1862.

The city's best years came under the Porfiriato, when the railway arrived in 1899 and the elite built eclectic and neoclassical buildings and mansions in French and Victorian taste. Around the Plaza de Armas stand the neoclassical cathedral, the former bishop's palace and the Mercado Morelos, an iron-framed market built from 1907 to 1913 where a couple of stalls still sell chongos zamoranos. The Teatro Obrero, restored in 2006, is part of the Centro Regional de las Artes de Michoacán, next to the Santuario Guadalupano, the neo-Gothic church whose 107.5 m towers are the tallest of any church in Mexico. El Colegio de Michoacán, a research centre founded by the historian Luis González y González in 1979, is also here.

The valley is farm country: Zamora is Mexico's leading strawberry producer, with 2,055 hectares planted and almost 113,000 tonnes harvested in 2023, and a major exporter of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries. The city's own sweet is the chongo zamorano, curdled milk cooked slowly in syrup with cinnamon, made commercially since 1934; other local dishes are papas zamoranas, potatoes with dark or cucumber-and-jalapeño salsa, and carne en su jugo. The Virgin of Guadalupe is celebrated from 1 to 12 December with processions and pilgrims, and on Good Friday the Procession of Silence crosses the centre. Lago de Camécuaro is close enough that day tours from Morelia combine the two.