Three days in Guanajuato: a mining camp that turned into a city without a grid

Two nights in a city with no straight streets, a day underground at the mine that paid for it, and a last morning among Diego Rivera and the mummies.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Guanajuato
Places
9 across 3 days
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Guanajuato was never planned. Silver was found in the hills here in the middle of the sixteenth century, miners camped where the ore was, and a city grew up the sides of a narrow ravine with no room to lay out a grid. What you get instead is a knot of alleys, staircases and squares at odd angles, painted every colour available, and a river bed underneath it all that was long ago roofed over and turned into roads.

For two and a half centuries this one valley produced something close to a third of the world's silver. That money paid for the theatres, the gilded churches and the university, and it is also why the war of independence started a few miles from here and had its first battle in the granary in the middle of town.

Three days is right for it. The centre is small enough to cross in twenty minutes on foot, the mine and its church are twenty minutes uphill, and the rest of the time is for getting lost, which here is unavoidable and is the point.

Highlights

  • The Jardin de la Union at nine in the evening, with a band in the bandstand and every table full
  • The view from the Pipila monument, reached by a funicular that climbs the ravine wall in three minutes
  • The Valenciana mine, which financed an empire, and the gold-drenched church its owner built beside it
  • The granary where the war of independence had its first battle, still pocked and still standing
  • Student minstrels leading a singing crowd through the alleys after dark, which is a real thing here and not a show

Where to stay

Guanajuato, two nights

The whole historic town and the mines around it have been a UNESCO site since 1987, which for once is not a formality: nowhere else in Mexico looks like this, because nowhere else had to build a baroque city into a gorge.

It is also a university town, and that changes the evenings completely. Term-time Guanajuato has cheap bars, student theatre, buskers, and squares full of people until well after midnight, which is not the usual character of a colonial mining town.

Day by day

Day 1 in Guanajuato

The Jardin de la Union, the theatre and the view at dusk

Everything on the first evening is within three hundred metres. The Jardin de la Union is a wedge-shaped square of clipped laurel trees that was once the atrium of a convent, ringed by restaurant tables, with a bandstand in the middle that is genuinely used most evenings.

The theatre on its edge is the best building in the city and the one to look inside: neoclassical outside, with bronze muses on the roofline, and then a Moorish interior of carved wood and red velvet that has nothing to do with the facade at all.

Then go up. The funicular behind the theatre climbs the ravine wall to the monument on the ridge, and the view is of a bowl of coloured houses stacked on top of each other with the domes pushing through. Go up before sunset, stay for the lights, and take the funicular back down rather than walking the slope in the dark.

  1. 17:15

    Jardín de la Unión

    Visit

    The central square, built as the atrium of a seventeenth century convent and now the place the whole city sits out. Free concerts from the bandstand most afternoons and evenings; take a table on the edge and let it happen around you.

  2. 18:30

    Teatro Juárez

    Culture

    Opened in 1903 by Porfirio Diaz, and worth the ticket for the interior alone: a Moorish hall of carved wood and gilding behind a neoclassical front. Still the main stage of the October festival.

  3. 19:30

    El Pípila

    Historic

    A 28 metre statue of the miner who, according to the story, tied a stone slab to his back and set fire to the granary door in 1810. The terrace at his feet is the view of the city, and it is better after dark.

  4. 21:00

    Dinner on the square

    Eat

    Back down for a late one. The tables around the garden are not the cheapest food in town but they are the best seats, and the callejoneadas set off from near here at about eight.

With more time: If the funicular queue is long, the alley of the kiss and the university steps are both two minutes from the square and fill twenty minutes happily.

Day 2 in Guanajuato

The granary, then up to the mine that paid for everything

The morning is the independence story, and it happened in a grain warehouse two streets from the centre. In September 1810, a few weeks into the revolt, the Spanish garrison and the loyalist families of the town shut themselves inside the granary with the treasury. The rebels could not force the door until a miner reached it under cover of a stone slab and burned it down. Everyone inside was killed.

The building is now the regional museum, and the corners of its roofline are where the four leaders of the revolt had their heads hung in iron cages for the next ten years as a warning. The museum tells the rest of it, along with the archaeology and art of the region.

The afternoon is uphill. The Valenciana vein was the richest in the city, it ran for two centuries, and the shaft, the hoist and the stone workings above ground are all still there. The count who owned it built a church at the gate as a thank-offering, and its three altars are so completely covered in carved and gilded wood that the effect is closer to a jewellery box than a building. The two are a hundred metres apart and make the point about this city better than anything else can.

  1. 09:45

    Alhóndiga de Granaditas

    Historic

    The granary the rebels stormed in 1810, now the state museum: pre-Hispanic pieces, colonial painting, the mining history and the independence rooms. Look up at the four corners outside before you go in.

  2. 12:00

    Lunch before heading up

    Eat

    Eat in town rather than at the mine. The stalls around the covered market are the cheap option and the better one at midday.

  3. 13:30

    Mina de Valenciana

    Other

    The richest silver mine in Guanajuato and still working, three kilometres above the centre. Guided visits go down a section of the old workings; the stone headframe and the ore terraces are worth the trip on their own.

  4. 15:00

    Church of San Cayetano Confesor

    Religious

    Built between 1765 and 1788 on the mine's profits, and one of the great examples of Mexican Churrigueresque: three altarpieces of gilded, carved wood, filling the walls from floor to vault.

With more time: A taxi up to the mine and a walk back down the old road into town takes about forty minutes and passes the workings of the first shaft ever sunk here, opened in 1550.

Day 3 in Guanajuato

The mummies, an alley and the house Rivera was born in

The strangest museum in Mexico is a kilometre west of the centre, and people either love it or refuse to go. Bodies exhumed from the municipal cemetery, when families stopped paying the fee that kept a plot, turned out not to have decayed: the soil and the dry air had mummified them, expressions and clothes intact. Over a hundred are now on display in glass cases. It is macabre and completely without solemnity, and it is the thing most Mexicans associate with the city.

Walk back in for the alley of the kiss, where two balconies lean so close across a lane that the gap is measured in centimetres. There is a legend about a miner's daughter, a rival suitor and a fatal misunderstanding, and there will be a child on the steps willing to tell it to you for a coin.

Finish at the house where Diego Rivera was born, a modest two-storey home now furnished as it would have been in the 1880s, with his early drawings and studies upstairs. It is small, quiet and a good last hour before the road out.

  1. 10:00

    Museum of the Mummies

    Culture

    More than a hundred naturally mummified bodies, disinterred from the cemetery above when the burial fee went unpaid, displayed with no ceremony whatsoever. Twenty minutes for most people, an hour for some.

  2. 11:30

    Callejon del Beso

    Landmark

    Two balconies 69 centimetres apart above a stepped lane, and the love story that goes with them. Costs nothing unless you want the tale told properly, which is worth the coin.

  3. 12:15

    Museo Casa Diego Rivera

    Culture

    The house Diego Rivera was born in, kept as a period home on the ground floor with a gallery of his early and lesser known work above. Half an hour, and a useful corrective if you only know the murals.

  4. 13:15

    Last lunch off the Plaza de la Paz

    Eat

    The small squares between the basilica and the university have terraces that are cheaper than the main garden and just as pleasant.

With more time: With a late departure, the churches in the centre are all within five minutes of each other and free, and the mineral museum at the university is an unexpectedly good half hour given what this city is built on.

Before you go

Where to stay

Stay in the centre, within a few minutes of the Jardin de la Union. Guanajuato has almost no flat ground, so a room ten minutes further out can mean a hundred and fifty steps at the end of the night, and taxis cannot always reach the door.

Rooms in the old houses on the alleys are the best of it: small, thick-walled, often with a roof terrace looking across the ravine at the other half of the city.

Getting there

The nearest airport is out at Silao, about forty minutes away, and is listed by airlines as Leon or Leon/Bajio rather than Guanajuato, which catches people out when they book. Mexico City is about four and a half hours by first-class coach, and the coaches are comfortable, frequent and cheap.

The bus station is a few kilometres west of the centre; take a taxi or a city bus in rather than walking, because the road runs through tunnels.

The tunnels

The city drives underneath itself. The tunnels started as flood channels for the river that ran through the ravine, and once a dam upstream removed the flooding they were turned into roads. Buses, taxis and cars run through them, with marked stops and staircases that surface in the middle of town.

Walking through them is normal and safe near the centre, if slightly unnerving the first time. It also means the surface of the old town is largely free of traffic, which is why a city built on a slope is a pleasure to walk.

Evenings

The callejoneadas are the local institution: students in doublets and hose, carrying instruments and a donkey with wine, gathering a crowd in a square and leading it through the alleys singing and telling stories. Tickets are sold on the spot in the evening, mostly in Spanish, and it is enjoyable even if you follow one word in ten.

October brings the Cervantino, a three-week international arts festival that fills every stage, square and hotel room in the city. Room rates double and the atmosphere is worth it, but book months out or avoid the dates entirely.

Walking and altitude

There is no level route anywhere here. Steps, ramps and cobbles are the whole surface, wheeled luggage is a mistake and so are new shoes. The city also sits high, so the first day's climbing feels harder than it should.

The funicular up to the Pipila monument is the one shortcut that matters, and it costs very little. Walking up is possible and takes about twenty minutes of steps.

Guanajuato is a city that cannot be walked in a straight line, which is the best thing about it. You aim for a square, take a staircase because it goes up, and arrive somewhere else entirely with a view over the roofs.

Give it one evening with no plan at all. Follow the singing.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is three days enough for Guanajuato?
For the city, yes, comfortably: the centre is small and the mine is a half day. People stay longer because it is pleasant rather than because there is more to tick off. A fourth day would sensibly go to San Miguel de Allende or Dolores Hidalgo, both about an hour and a half away.
Guanajuato or San Miguel de Allende?
Guanajuato is the working city with the mines, the university and the history; San Miguel is prettier, flatter, far more expensive and largely inhabited by foreign residents. They are ninety minutes apart, so the real answer is both, with the nights here.
How much walking is involved?
A lot, all of it on cobbles and much of it on steps. There is no flat route through this city, and no metro or tram to fall back on. Nothing here needs particular fitness, but pack shoes rather than a wheeled suitcase.
Is it safe?
The centre is safe day and night and heavily walked. The two things to avoid are the panoramic road around the rim of the valley outside daylight hours, where there is a real history of attacks on visitors, and the slopes above the Pipila monument after dark.
When should I go?
Any time except the second half of October, unless the Cervantino festival is why you are coming, in which case book months ahead. The city sits high enough that evenings are cool all year and the summer rain falls mostly in the afternoons.
Can I change it?
Yes. Open it in your account and it becomes an ordinary trip: add a night, drop the mummies, put San Miguel on the end, or move the whole thing to a different week.