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Guanajuato & San Miguel Attractions

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Guanajuato & San Miguel Attractions

The Church of San Diego, on the Jardín Unión, stands almost as it did in 1633, when it was built under the direction of Franciscan missionaries. A flood in 1760 nearly destroyed it. The reconstruction was completed in 1786, largely at the expense of the Count of La Valenciana. The pink cantera-stone facade is a fine example of the Mexican baroque.

The Plazuela del Baratillo, just behind the Jardín Unión, has a beautiful fountain (a gift from Emperor Maximilian) at its center. You'll always find people sitting around it peacefully, some in the shade and others in the sun. Its name derives from its former role as a weekly tianguis (market); vendors would yell "¡Barato!" ("Cheap!").

Just west of Baratillo is the Church of the Compañía. Built in 1747 by the Jesuit order, it was the biggest of their churches. It dominates the street. The churrigueresque decoration lightens it somewhat, but the interior, which was restored in the 19th century, is neoclassical. This church was built as part of a Jesuit university, which was founded in 1732 on orders of Philip V. It's the last of 23 universities the Jesuit order built in Mexico. The main building of the university is on the same block as the church. Its entrance was rebuilt in 1945 in imposing neoclassical style.

Farther west, between the main street, Juárez, and Calle Positos are three plazas almost connected to each other and worth seeing: Plaza San Roque, Jardín de la Reforma, and Plaza San Fernando, where you can sit at one of the outdoor tables and enjoy coffee in a perfectly charming setting. This plaza is an increasingly popular hangout, and it's a good area to find an Internet cafe.

Guanajuato & San Miguel Activities

El Pípila
This is the best vantage point in Guanajuato for photographs -- the whole city unfolds below you, with great views in every direction. A funicular railway runs up the hill from behind the church of San Diego. You can also climb the hill on foot up a rugged winding pathway. Just look for signs that read AL PIPILA (To El Pípila).

The statue is the city's monument to José de los Reyes Martínez, better known as El Pípila. According to the story, El Pípila (if he existed) was a brave young miner in Father Hidalgo's ragtag army of peasants and workers fighting for Mexican independence. Guanajuato was the first real battle of the war. The royalist forces took up their position inside the Alhóndiga de Granaditas. It seemed impregnable to Hidalgo's army, which lacked artillery. But El Pípila managed to breach the Spanish defenses by tying a flagstone to his back as protection, crawling to the fortress doors, and setting them ablaze. Today, El Pípila's statue raises a torch high over the city in everlasting vigilance; the inscription at his feet proclaims AUN HAY OTRAS ALHONDIGAS POR INCENDIAR (There still remain other alhóndigas to burn).

Museo Iconográfico del Quijote
There are only a few truly universal characters in the world of literature: Hamlet, Faust, Don Juan, and Don Quixote come to mind. Writers far and wide have taken up these characters and reworked their stories, but Don Quixote much more than the others has become a favorite subject of artists. The list includes Dalí, Picasso, Miró, Raul Angiano, José Guadalupe Posada, Daumier, José Moreno Carbonero, and Pedro Coronel. This museum, a long block southeast of the Jardín Unión, past the Hostería del Frayle, holds a fascinating collection of art based upon Don Quixote -- all Quixote, all the time! Particularly forceful are the sculptures and murals, but the sheer variety of forms and thematic treatment is what makes a stroll through this museum so entertaining.

Museo Regional La Alhóndiga de Granaditas
On the same street as the Rivera Museum, 2 blocks farther down, is La Alhóndiga. La Alhóndiga de Granaditas was built between 1798 and 1809 as the town granary -- hard to believe, because it is such a beautiful building. The Spanish took refuge here in 1810 when El Pípila and company captured Guanajuato. A slaughter ensued that Father Hidalgo was unable to stop. This convinced many people who had been leaning toward independence to remain loyal to Spain, although when the Spanish forces under Félix Calleja retook Guanajuato, they exacted an equally horrible revenge on the locals suspected of collusion. (The exhibitions tell the story.) By the next year, the royalist forces triumphed, and the heads of the insurrectionists Hidalgo, Allende, Aldama, and Jiménez adorned the four corners of the building, where they remained until 1821 as a dissuasive reminder.

The old granary now houses a museo regional. The interior courtyard is large and beautiful and shouldn't be missed. Two floors of rooms hold exhibits of pre-Columbian artifacts, displays on colonial history, and regional crafts. Adorning the two stairways to the second floor are the vivid murals of José Chávez Morado, who donated his pre-Hispanic art collection to the museum (and whose colonial-era collection is in the Museo del Pueblo de Guanajuato). The exhibits that follow take you through the region's colonial era and its role in the struggle for independence, all the way up to the Mexican Revolution. Explanatory text is in Spanish only, but the artifacts are interesting and well displayed. Down the hill from the Alhóndiga is the Mercado Hidalgo.

Museo de Los Momias (Mummy Museum)
First-time visitors find this museum grotesque or fascinating or both: Mummified remains of the dead, some of whom wear tattered clothing from centuries past, are on display. Dryness and the earth's gases and minerals in this particular panteón have halted decomposition. Because graveyards have limited space, bodies are eventually exhumed in Mexico to make room for newcomers. Those on display were exhumed between 1865 and 1985. The mummies stand or recline in glass cases, grinning, choking, or staring, while tour guides tell crowds of visitors macabre stories in Spanish of the fates of some of the deceased. Are they true? Quien sabe. But it's impossible to resist the temptation to go up and look at them, and this is the only graveyard I've seen with souvenir stands. They mostly sell sugar skulls and effigies of the mummies. Next to the mummy museum is a small exhibit called "El Culto a la Muerte," which is a bad mix of morbid and hokey.

Museo del Pueblo de Guanajuato
Just north of the Plaza de la Paz is this 17th-century mansion that once belonged to the Marqués San Juan de Rayas. The first and third floors display traveling exhibits; the second holds a fascinating collection of colonial-era civil and religious pieces gathered by distinguished local muralist José Chávez Morado. As a collector, Chávez Morado had an eye for the macabre, acquiring death portraits, some even eerier portraits of the living, and religious paintings on the subject of mortality. Also in the collection are some paintings by the gifted Hermenegildo Bustos, a portrait artist of the 19th century. There is a small collection of pre-Hispanic artifacts and several folk-art testimonials dedicated to the miraculous powers of various saints. The museum contains a couple of Chávez's murals; other works can be found at La Alhóndiga, down the street.

Museum Birthplace of Diego Rivera
From the Museo del Pueblo, walk 1 1/2 blocks farther down the street, and you'll find the house where the artist Diego Rivera was born on December 8, 1886. It has been restored and converted into a museum. The first floor is furnished as it might have been in the era of Rivera's birth. Upstairs there's a pretty good collection of his early works. He began painting when he was 10 years old and eventually moved to Paris, where he became a Marxist during World War I. The house contains a few sketches of some of the earlier murals that made his reputation, and paintings from 1902 to 1956. The fourth floor holds a small auditorium for lectures and conferences, and there you'll find a large representation of one of Rivera's most famous murals, Un Sueño Dominical en la Alameda.

Teatro Juárez
Built in 1903 during the opulent era of the Porfiriato, this theater is now the venue for many productions, especially during the Festival Cervantino. The exterior is starkly at odds with its surroundings -- Greco-Roman columns and pediments adorned with fin-de-siècle bronze lions and lanterns. The interior is especially eye-catching. Box seats rise up four stories along the walls of the theater, and there's not a bad seat in the house.

Templo de Cata
Up above the city, perched on the mountain to the north, is this small, elaborate "miners' church." Cata is also the name of the mine nearby and the barrio (neighborhood) that surrounds the church. A lovely baroque facade, with just one tower standing, decorates the outside. Until a couple of years ago, this church held an enormous number of personal testimonials that covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Most of these took the traditional form of small square sheets of metal with painted scenes (in a primitive folk style) and explanatory text describing the miracles performed by the church's Señor de Villaseca. "El Trigueñito" (roughly translated as "the olive-skinned one"), as he is affectionately called, is a popular figure in Guanajuato, especially with miners and truck and taxi drivers. The testimonials were a touching display of the highly personal relationship these people have with El Trigueñito. What has become of all these testimonials is now the question. At first, the removal of the testimonials was supposed to be temporary, but I suspect they might not be coming back.