Three days in San Miguel de Allende: the prettiest town in Mexico, and it knows it

Two nights on the cobbles: the pink parish church and Allende's house, a frescoed pilgrimage chapel and the hot springs north of town, and a last morning in the cactus garden above the roofs.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
San Miguel de Allende
Places
8 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

San Miguel de Allende was nearly a ghost town a century ago. The silver economy that built it had gone, the population was falling, and what saved it was a preservation order: declared a national monument in 1926, with new building in the old centre heavily restricted ever since. That is why it looks the way it does. Nothing has been knocked down and replaced, so the whole centre is still low, cobbled and painted in ochre, rust and terracotta, and the tallest thing in it is a church.

The church is the one everybody photographs. The Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel has a pink stone front covered in pinnacles and spires that was added in the nineteenth century by a self-taught local builder, working, so the story goes, from a picture of a European cathedral he had never seen. It is completely out of place and it is the making of the town.

Three days is the right length. The centre is twenty minutes across on foot, one full day belongs outside town at the frescoed sanctuary and the hot springs beyond it, and the rest of the time goes on the thing San Miguel is actually good at, which is sitting somewhere with a view and not doing very much.

Highlights

  • The pink front of the parish church at dusk, floodlit, seen from a rooftop table on the square
  • The house Ignacio Allende was born in, now the museum of the revolt he started and did not survive
  • Atotonilco, a plain-looking country church whose interior is covered floor to vault in eighteenth century painting
  • An afternoon in warm spring water under a stone grotto, twenty minutes north of town
  • An unfinished Siqueiros mural in a former convent that is now an art school, left exactly where he stopped

Where to stay

San Miguel de Allende, two nights

The town and the sanctuary at Atotonilco were listed together by UNESCO in 2008, which is unusual and tells you how closely the two are tied: the pilgrimage church out on the plain is the reason a settlement of this size ever mattered, and the banner carried out of it in 1810 became the flag of the revolt.

Founded in 1542 and named San Miguel el Grande, it took its present name in 1826 after Ignacio Allende, the cavalry officer who planned the uprising with the priest Hidalgo and was born four streets from the main square. Almost every street name in the centre is somebody from that story.

Day by day

Day 1 in San Miguel de Allende

El Jardin, the pink church and the house Allende was born in

Everything on the first day is within three hundred metres, which is convenient, because the altitude and the cobbles together make the first afternoon feel longer than it is.

Start on the square. El Jardin is a rectangle of laurels clipped flat as tables, ringed by iron benches, with the church filling one whole side of it. Shoeshine stands, balloon sellers, mariachi bands standing about waiting to be hired, and a slow rotation of the entire town passing through at some point in the day. Sit for twenty minutes before you do anything else.

Then the church, which takes ten minutes inside and rather longer from the outside, and then Allende's house on the corner, which is the best small museum in town and the one that explains why the place is called what it is.

  1. 12:30

    El Jardín

    Visit

    The main square, and the centre of everything here. Laurels trimmed into blocks, benches all the way round, and the parish church filling the whole south side. Busiest in the early evening.

  2. 13:20

    Lunch in the covered market

    Eat

    The market north of the square has cooked-food counters at the back, serving set lunches until the middle of the afternoon. Cheapest proper meal in the centre, and not by a small margin.

  3. 15:00

    Parroquia San Miguel Arcángel

    Visit

    The pink stone front is a nineteenth century addition to a sixteenth century parish church, designed by a self-taught local builder said to have worked from a postcard of a Gothic cathedral. It looks like nothing else in Mexico. The interior is plain by comparison and takes ten minutes.

  4. 16:00

    Museo Histórico de San Miguel de Allende

    Culture

    The house Ignacio Allende grew up in, furnished as a wealthy creole family would have kept it, with the story of the revolt upstairs and how it ended for him in 1811. Labelled in Spanish and English.

  5. 20:00

    Dinner, then a roof

    Eat

    Eat early and finish somewhere high. The rooftop bars around the square all face the same floodlit church front, and the drinks are priced for the view.

With more time: The blocks east and south of the square are the ones to wander before dinner: heavy wooden doors, courtyards you can see into, and walls painted in colours that would look absurd anywhere it rained more.

Day 2 in San Miguel de Allende

The frescoes at Atotonilco, then an afternoon in the hot springs

Go north. Twelve kilometres out on the road towards Dolores Hidalgo there is a low white eighteenth century church in a village of almost nothing, and the inside of it is one of the strangest interiors in the country: every wall, vault and surface covered in painting and text, done over decades by a single artist and his workshop, dark, crowded and unrestored. People call it the Sistine Chapel of Mexico, which oversells the technique and undersells the effect.

It is a working pilgrimage site rather than a monument, so expect people praying and dress accordingly. Minibuses marked El Santuario run out there from town, and a taxi is not expensive if you would rather not wait.

Then keep going. The same valley has warm mineral springs, and the pools built into it are where San Miguel spends its Sundays. Take a towel, take water, and plan on staying most of the afternoon. Back in town for the late afternoon, the former convent beside the square is now an art school with an unfinished mural in it that is worth twenty minutes.

  1. 09:30

    Sanctuary of Atotonilco

    Religious

    An eighteenth century pilgrimage church whose plain exterior gives away nothing. Inside, the whole thing is painted: scenes, borders, verse, all of it dense and dim and still in use. Cover your shoulders.

  2. 11:30

    La Gruta

    Visit

    Five warm pools and a tunnel that opens into a domed grotto with the water pouring in from above. Busy at weekends, closed at the start of the week, and food cannot be brought in, though there is a restaurant.

  3. 15:30

    Late lunch back in town

    Eat

    Nothing much is open near the springs beyond the site restaurant, so eat properly once you are back. Three o'clock is a normal Mexican lunchtime and half the kitchens in the centre are only then getting busy.

  4. 17:00

    Centro Cultural Ignacio Ramírez

    Culture

    A former convent turned art school, built around a courtyard, with rotating exhibitions in the cloister and a mural by David Alfaro Siqueiros on the ground floor that he never finished. Free, and quiet in the late afternoon.

With more time: There is a second set of pools a little further along the same road, cheaper and usually quieter, where you can bring your own food. If the first one looks like a car park when you arrive, go on to that instead.

Day 3 in San Miguel de Allende

The cactus garden above the roofs, then the Oratorio

The last morning goes uphill, early, before the heat. Above the eastern edge of town there is a canyon that has been turned into a botanical reserve, planted almost entirely with Mexican cacti and succulents, with a reservoir at the top that pulls in migrating birds. It is a twenty-five minute walk from the square or five minutes in a taxi, and the paths take about an hour and a half at a slow pace.

Come back down for one church. The Oratorio is the one locals use rather than the one on the postcards, a carved pink sandstone front from the early eighteenth century on a plaza with a market spilling round it, and it is a better last impression of the town than another photograph of the Parroquia.

Then eat, and go.

  1. 08:00

    El Charco del Ingenio Jardín Botánico

    Visit

    A canyon above town planted as a botanical reserve, heavy on cacti and agave, with an old mill and waterworks in it and a reservoir at the top. Go early: it is exposed, and the birds are gone by mid morning.

  2. 10:30

    Oratorio de San Felipe Neri

    Visit

    Finished in 1714, with a delicately cut pink sandstone facade and a set of chapels added on behind it later. Free, working, and usually has somebody in it.

  3. 12:00

    Last lunch before the road

    Eat

    The streets around the Oratorio are a few pesos cheaper than the ones on the main square and no worse. Set lunches are served from about one.

With more time: With a late departure, the private collection of several hundred Mexican ceremonial masks a few streets east of the square is half an hour well spent and almost nobody goes.

Before you go

Where to stay

Stay in the centro, inside the ring of streets around El Jardin. The town is built into a slope and the difference between a room five minutes from the square and one fifteen minutes away is a long climb on cobbles at the end of the night.

The old courtyard houses converted into small hotels are the pleasure of the place: thick walls, a fountain in the middle, and usually a roof terrace with the church front in view. They are not cheap. San Miguel is one of the most expensive towns in Mexico to sleep in, and the gap between it and Guanajuato ninety minutes away is startling.

Getting there

There is no airport. The two useful ones are Queretaro, about ninety kilometres southeast, and Leon or Bajio, about ninety-five kilometres west; both are roughly an hour away by road and both have flights from Mexico City and several US cities. Arrange the transfer through your hotel or take an official green and white taxi from the terminal, because ride-hailing drivers picking up at the airports risk being turned back by the police.

From Mexico City the coach is the sensible option: comfortable first-class services run several times a day and take around four hours to the terminal on the edge of town, which is a short taxi ride from the centre.

The cobbles

Almost everything is walkable and almost none of it is flat. Some of the lanes climb at fifteen or twenty degrees, the paving is rounded river cobble laid over what were once goat tracks, and the kerbs are often a high step up from the road. Wheeled luggage is a bad idea and so is anything with a thin sole.

For the rest, local buses run through the town for a few pesos from early morning until about nine at night, and Uber and Didi both operate. Routes are called by destination rather than by number and there is no map, so ask.

The foreign town inside the town

San Miguel has had a resident foreign population since the 1950s, when a cluster of art schools including the Instituto Allende drew American ex-servicemen studying on the GI Bill, and it never stopped. Several thousand Americans and Canadians live here now. English is spoken almost everywhere in the centre, menus are bilingual, prices are set accordingly, and a certain kind of traveller finds the whole thing insufferable.

It is worth knowing before you book rather than discovering on the first evening. The trade is real: San Miguel gives you galleries, good coffee and a level of comfort that a town of seventy thousand people would not otherwise have, and takes away some of the sense of being anywhere in particular. The market, the outer barrios and the churches on a Sunday morning are still entirely Mexican.

When to go

The town sits high in the Bajio, so days are warm and evenings are cool all year and the summer rain mostly falls late in the afternoon. March to May is dry and hot, June to September green and showery, and the winter months are the busiest because of the weather up north.

September is the exception worth planning around or avoiding: independence week is a serious event here, given whose home town this is, and the town is loud, full and expensive from the middle of the month.

San Miguel is not a town you go to in order to see things. There are about six of those and you will have seen them by lunchtime on the second day. What you go for is the light on painted walls at six in the evening, a courtyard you were not expecting behind a door left open, and the fact that the most beautiful building in it was designed by somebody working from a picture.

Take the second afternoon slowly. That is what the place is for.

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 San Miguel de Allende?
For the town itself, more than enough: the centre is small and you will have walked all of it by the second morning. Three days works because one of them goes out to the sanctuary and the springs. People who stay a week are staying for the pace, not the sights.
San Miguel de Allende or Guanajuato?
Guanajuato is a real working city built into a ravine, with a university, the mines and the independence history, and it is much cheaper. San Miguel is prettier, flatter, calmer and far more anglophone. They are about ninety minutes apart, so the honest answer is both, and the two together make a good four or five days.
Do I need a car?
No. The town is walkable and the two trips out of it, to the sanctuary and to the springs, are both served by local minibuses from the centre or by a cheap taxi. A car is a liability in a town where every street is cobbled and parking is scarce.
Is it really full of foreigners?
In the centro, yes, noticeably so, and that has been true since the art schools of the 1950s brought American veterans here to study. Several thousand foreign residents live in the town. If that would spoil it for you, Guanajuato, Morelia and Queretaro are all within a couple of hours and none of them are like this.
How hard is the walking?
Harder than the size of the place suggests. The town is built on a slope, some lanes climb at close to twenty degrees, and the cobbles are uneven. Nothing here needs particular fitness, but it needs proper shoes, and anyone with a bad knee should budget for taxis.
Can I change it?
Yes. Open it in your account and it becomes an ordinary trip you can edit: add a night, swap the springs for a day in Guanajuato, or move the whole thing to a different week.