Villa de Reyes

Villa de Reyes, about 20 kilometers west of Santa María del Río, is one of the oldest settlements in San Luis Potosí. In the 16th century it was the Valle de San Francisco, where missionaries arrived to evangelize the region and where a fort was founded in 1569 to protect travelers on the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the silver road that ran north from Mexico City. Today the municipality is better known for its industrial parks, but its old center and the countryside around it hold a remarkable collection of colonial haciendas.

The state promotes them as a hacienda route: Gogorrón, whose first land grants date to 1592 and which has been used as a film set, including for a Zorro movie; Pardo and La Ventilla; Calderón, with its old waterworks; Bledos, one of the oldest; and Jesús María, now a religious center. In town, the Templo Parroquial de San Francisco, the Santuario de Guadalupe and the house associated with the royalist general Félix María Calleja are the main stops.

It is also a place to eat well, with carnitas, barbacoa, red mole and quince sweets, and a community-run winery, Casa Fronda, has added wine to the mix. The patron saint's fiesta, for San Francisco de Asís, runs from late September to October 4.