Xalapa

The Totonacs first settled around Macuiltépetl, the extinct volcano that is now the city's highest point. In the 14th century four Indigenous villages grew up in the area, and around 1313 they joined to form a single settlement, Xallapan — from Nahuatl words meaning roughly "spring in the sand". In the second half of the 15th century the Aztec ruler Moctezuma Ilhuicamina brought it into his empire, and in 1519 Hernán Cortés passed through on his march to Tenochtitlan. Spanish Franciscans completed a convent here in 1555.

The town lay on the road from the port of Veracruz to the highlands, and its fortunes followed that trade. It declined in the 17th century when the Spanish improved the route through Orizaba, then grew strongly in the 18th century as merchants gathered to trade goods arriving from Spain. Among its trade goods was a medicinal root, the source of a drug known in English as jalap. Xalapa was declared a town in 1791 and a city in 1830, and Alexander von Humboldt, visiting in 1804, called it the "city of flowers".

In April 1847 US forces defeated Santa Anna's army at nearby Cerro Gordo and occupied the town; the young Ulysses S. Grant wrote that it was the most beautiful place he had ever seen. The French took the city during their intervention in 1862. In the 1880s Governor Juan de la Luz Enríquez, whose name the city now carries, moved some of the state's legislative authority here, and with the Swiss educator Enrique Rébsamen founded the Normal School in 1886, the first of its kind in the country. That school, and later Veracruzana University, made Xalapa a city of learning, the "Athens of Veracruz".

Xalapa's identity is bound up with Veracruzana University, the main public university of the state, which runs the Museum of Anthropology and the Xalapa Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra, founded in 1929 by Governor Adalberto Tejeda, is considered the oldest in Mexico; since 2013 it has played in its own hall at the Centro Cultural Tlaqná. In 2021 UNESCO named Xalapa a City of Music, citing its strong creative focus on musical culture.

Music is not confined to concert halls. Musicians and dancers perform in the centre at night, often dancing the fandango, and the city is home to the son jarocho group Son de Madera; the opera tenor Javier Camarena was born here. The theatres, museums and street art give the place a lively, student-filled character, and art has a keen following, from the Rivera collection at the Pinacoteca to contemporary galleries.

The religious year centres on the cathedral. On 8 December the city celebrates the Immaculate Conception, its patroness, and in October thousands of pilgrims come to the tomb of Saint Rafael Guízar y Valencia inside the cathedral. Xalapa's people are called Xalapeños — the same word as the chilli that takes its name from the city — and the nickname "city of flowers" is still used with pride.

In the 2020 census the city of Xalapa had about 443,000 people and the municipality about 489,000, making it the second-largest city in Veracruz after the port. Its metropolitan area, which takes in Coatepec, Banderilla, Emiliano Zapata, Xico and other neighbouring municipalities, had about 789,000.

As the state capital, the city employs many people in government, and it is the seat of one of the regional chambers of Mexico's electoral tribunal. The university and its schools bring a large student population. Coffee, grown on smallholdings and estates in the surrounding mountains, is central to the local economy, alongside flowers, tropical fruit and tobacco, and the supermarket chain Chedraui is based in the city. The city also has shopping malls, cinemas and many franchise restaurants.

Daily life is shaped by the hills and the weather. Mornings often begin in mist, buses labour up steep streets, and the cool, damp climate makes the cafés of the centre a natural meeting place for students, office workers and families. Evenings bring people out to Parque Juárez, the alleys around the cathedral and the many concerts and cultural events.

The jalapeño chilli takes its name from Xalapa, though the city's own cooking is built more on maize than on heat. Everyday dishes include gorditas, small thick corn cakes; tostadas; enfrijoladas, tortillas folded and bathed in bean sauce; and chicken in many forms. At the Mercado Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, known as La Rotunda, the speciality is the picada, a thick corn tortilla with a pinched rim covered in salsa and finely chopped meat, with smaller picaditas for a lighter bite.

Coffee is the drink of the city. Veracruz has Mexico's oldest coffee tradition, and Xalapa claims to be the state's coffee capital, with cafés clustered around the cathedral serving beans from the slopes around Coatepec and Xico. In Xico the local mole xiqueño, made with more than 25 ingredients, is sweeter than mole poblano because it uses more fruit.

The region has a sweet tooth. Cocadas, coconut sweets, candied fruit, dulce de leche and jamoncillo, a milk fudge, are sold in markets and sweet shops, and cake is a common dessert. For a wider view of Veracruz cooking, restaurants in the city also serve dishes from the Huasteca in the north of the state.