Barrio de Xallitic

Xallitic is Xalapa's spring quarter. It fills a small ravine about 400 metres north of the cathedral, between Calle Doctor Rafael Lucio and Calle Francisco I. Madero, with cobbled alleys, stairways and an arched bridge crossing overhead. On 17 August 2023 Mexico's federal Tourism Secretariat (SECTUR) named it a Barrio Mágico, the first in Veracruz, and the designation came with a scheme to repaint 140 house fronts and add 20 murals.

The name is Nahuatl and is usually rendered as "spring in the sand" or "in the belly of the sand". Tradition counts it among the four barrios that gave rise to Xalapa and credits the Totonacs with founding it. Research by INAH's Veracruz office qualifies that story: Xallitic is the only one of those barrios with traces of a pre-Hispanic village, a small farming community with pottery from around 1500-1600, probably Nahua, while the four-barrio idea goes back to the late 19th-century historian Manuel Rivera Cambas.

Water made the neighbourhood. Colonial rules required it to be shared, so channels ran from here to public fountains and nearby residents came to fetch water for their homes. In 1775 the militia captain Diego de Gorozpe asked to tap the ravine as a supply, and between 16 February and 16 October 1778 works were built to feed the Plaza del Rey, today the Mercado Jáuregui, where goods from the colonial trade fairs were sold. Between 1895 and 1912 the public wash houses made Xallitic a meeting place for Xalapa's families, and they are still there beside an open plaza. The Callejón del Infiernillo is where muleteers and traders rested, lighting charcoal braziers to keep warm and cook.

The present bridge was built between 1956 and 1962 to ease downtown traffic; it has four round arches, and beneath it are gardens, fountains and steps climbing to the mural "La ruta de Hernán Cortés" by Francisco Salmerón Tinajero, painted like a codex. Every August the barrio marks the anniversary of the designation with music, danzón, workshops and food and craft stalls; in 2026 it ran for four free days, with exhibitors from Xico, Coatepec, Naolinco and Papantla.