Cerro del Fortín

Cerro del Fortín is the hill that rises on the north-west edge of Oaxaca's historic centre and the city's best-known lookout, reaching about 1,720 m above sea level. Its name, "little fort", recalls the defensive trenches dug on it at various times because it overlooks the whole city; before the Spanish arrived, Mexica invaders set up the garrison of Huaxyacac at its foot. Since 2004 the upper slopes have been a state park of 87 hectares, the Parque Estatal Cerro del Fortín, where decades of reforestation, first with eucalyptus and later with jacarandas and guaje trees, now shelter some 95 plant species and around 80 kinds of birds.

The hill is best known as the home of the Guelaguetza. The festival grew out of the old custom of going up the hill after the feast of the Virgen del Carmen in July, and in 1932, for the city's fourth centenary, the first regional dance celebration was staged here. It is still held on the last two Mondays of July, the Lunes del Cerro, in the Auditorio Guelaguetza, an open-air amphitheatre built into the slope in 1974 in the manner of a Greek theatre. Beside it a statue of Benito Juárez looks out over the city that shaped him, and nearby a monument carries his motto, "El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz".

Most visitors climb from Calle Crespo up the Escaleras del Fortín, a broad stairway busy every morning with locals exercising, then pass through a muraled underpass beneath Highway 190 to the foot of the auditorium. A brick road, the Vía Nicolás Copérnico, continues to the Planetario Nundehui, opened in 1976 through a sister-city agreement with Palo Alto, California, whose name means "looking at the sky" in Mixtec; its 110-seat dome runs 45-minute shows on a Japanese Goto projector, and an exhibition room displays fragments of the Allende and Toluca meteorites. The municipal astronomical observatory, opened in 1973, stands nearby, and beyond it dirt tracks and paths climb through the woods toward a hilltop cross.