Guanajuato

The valley was home to the Otomi before Chichimeca peoples displaced them. Spanish prospectors found silver here in the mid-16th century, and the Rayas mine, discovered in 1550, gave its name to one of the first mining settlements. Despite Chichimeca attacks, migrants poured in, and the town grew from four barrios — Marfil, Tepetapa, Santa Ana and Santa Fe — strung along the river at the bottom of the ravine. In the 18th century the Valenciana mine on the northern edge became one of the richest in the world, and its owners, the Counts of Valenciana, paid for churches such as San Cayetano, while the profits built the baroque and Churrigueresque city that survives.

In September 1810 Miguel Hidalgo's insurgent army reached Guanajuato. Royalist troops and much of the local elite barricaded themselves in the Alhóndiga de Granaditas, a newly built granary, and held it until a miner known as El Pípila crawled to its door under a stone slab and set it alight. It was the first battle of the War of Independence.

Mining revived in the late 19th century and paid for the Juárez Theatre, inaugurated with Verdi's Aida, and the Monumento a la Paz. The river regularly flooded the narrow city, and ditches and tunnels were dug to carry the water away; after dams brought the floods under control in the 1960s, many tunnels became roads. The first Festival Internacional Cervantino was held in 1972, and in 1988 the historic town and adjacent mines were made a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Silver and gold are still mined around the city.

Guanajuato calls itself the Cervantes capital of the Americas, although the writer never visited Mexico. From the 1950s short one-act plays by Cervantes, the entremeses, were staged in the city's plazas, and in 1972 they grew with federal support into the Festival Internacional Cervantino, now the most important international arts festival in Latin America. Statues of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza stand in the streets, and a museum is devoted to images of the knight.

The University of Guanajuato gives the city its youthful character. Its estudiantinas, groups of student musicians, lead callejoneadas, singing walks through the alleys, a pastime born of the narrow streets and now also arranged for visitors. Legends are a big part of local identity: the Callejón del Beso has its own legend, and Guanajuato has its own version of La Llorona, wandering the tunnels.

The mummies are another part of the city's fame. Bodies exhumed from the municipal cemetery have been shown to paying visitors since the late 19th century, and a 1972 film in which the masked wrestler El Santo fights them made them famous across Mexico. Religious life is visible in the basilica's Holy Week ceremonies, and the house where Diego Rivera was born is now a museum.

At the 2020 census the municipality had 194,500 inhabitants, about 72,200 of them in the city itself. The capital is small compared with León and the industrial cities of the Bajío, and much of its life revolves around the state government, the university, tourism and mining. Commerce and services are the largest employers, followed by construction and mining, and several silver and gold mines still operate around the city.

Students fill the centre during term, and the Jardín de la Unión, the Plaza de la Paz and the steps of the university are the city's meeting places. Houses climb the hillsides in tiers of colour, reached by alleys and stairways too narrow for cars, so many residents carry their shopping up by hand, while buses and taxis use the tunnels below. Older barrios such as Valenciana, Cata and Pastita grew up around their mines.

Traffic and parking in the narrow streets are everyday concerns, and the weeks of the Cervantino change the rhythm of the city completely, filling streets, hotels and plazas with visitors.

The dish most closely tied to the city is the enchilada minera, or miner's enchilada: tortillas filled with cheese and served with potatoes and carrots. It is served almost everywhere, from market stalls to restaurants on the plazas. Some cooks also offer enchiladas cervantinas, named after the festival.

Mercado Hidalgo, an iron-roofed hall built in 1910 on the site of the old Gavira bullring, is the place for cheap meals, with stalls selling enchiladas mineras, huaraches and pambazos. Around the Mercado Embajadoras, stalls and a small park next to the market sell tlacoyos, gorditas and sopes, the thick corn snacks found across central Mexico.

Sweets are a tradition. Charamuscas, twisted sugar candies often shaped as charros or mummies, are sold in the market, and the state's cajeta, a goat's milk caramel from Celaya, and strawberries from Irapuato turn up in desserts and drinks. The cafés around the Jardín de la Unión and the bars of the centre, full of students, are where evenings begin.