Villahermosa

Villahermosa is the capital of Tabasco and its largest city, the seat of the municipality of Centro, with about 340,000 people in the city itself and more than 800,000 in the metropolitan area (2020 census). It sits only about ten meters above sea level on low ground ringed by water: the Grijalva River runs along its east side, the Carrizal to the north and west, and several lagoons lie inside the city, the largest being the Laguna de las Ilusiones, now a protected area.

The Spanish founded the town on 24 June 1564, the feast of Saint John the Baptist, and for centuries it was called San Juan Bautista. In 1598 Philip II gave it the title Villa Hermosa de San Juan Bautista, and in 1916 Governor Francisco J. Múgica dropped the saint's name and left plain Villahermosa. The old center still has the Plaza de Armas with the Palacio de Gobierno, finished in 1894, the Inmaculada Concepción church known as La Conchita, and the Zona Luz, a grid of pedestrian streets with shops, cafés and the tiled Casa de los Azulejos museum. From the 1950s on, oil money turned the city into the business hub of Pemex in the southeast, and the modern Tabasco 2000 district grew up to the west.

For visitors the big draws are cultural. Parque-Museo La Venta, set up by the poet Carlos Pellicer in 1958 beside the Laguna de las Ilusiones, displays Olmec colossal heads and altars in a patch of tropical forest, and the Museo Regional de Antropología Carlos Pellicer Cámara holds Olmec, Maya and Zoque pieces. The city is also a practical base: Comalcalco and the cacao haciendas are about an hour away, Yumká is near the airport, and the Sierra towns and the Pantanos de Centla can be done as day trips. Expect heat and humidity most of the year; spring can pass 40 °C, and in 2007 the rivers flooded much of the city.