Layout of Guanajuato
Guanajuato is built inside a narrow ravine at about 2,000 m, with the ground rising 300 m to the rim on either side. There is no grid. A single winding line of streets runs up the valley floor and the rest of the city climbs the slopes as stepped lanes and callejones, most of them too steep or too narrow for a car. The centre is the triangular Jardín de la Unión, flanked by the Templo de San Diego and the Teatro Juárez, completed in 1903 with a Doric colonnade and bronze muses on the parapet. Two hundred metres north-west, Plaza de la Paz holds the yellow Basílica Colegiata de Nuestra Señora de Guanajuato, and above it stand the stepped façade and 113-step staircase of the University of Guanajuato.
The city grew along the Río Guanajuato, which repeatedly flooded it, most destructively in 1905. Dams upstream and a diversion tunnel eventually took the water out of the ravine, and in the 1960s the vaulted stone riverbed beneath the centre was surfaced and opened to vehicles. Further bores were driven afterwards, so several kilometres of subterranean street now carry most of the traffic under the historic core; drivers arriving for the first time often surface in the wrong place. Around the rim, the Carretera Panorámica circles the whole bowl and gives access to the Monumento al Pípila, the statue of the miner who fired the door of the Alhóndiga in 1810, reached from the centre by a funicular.
There is no airport at Guanajuato itself. Del Bajío International (BJX) lies 30 km west near Silao, shared with León, and carries direct flights to Mexico City, Tijuana, Monterrey and a dozen US cities including Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles and Chicago. The Central de Autobuses is about 6 km west of the centre on the Silao road, outside the ravine, and is linked to the centre by city buses. Marfil, the old ore-processing valley on the same road, is where much of the newer hotel and residential building has gone, since the ravine itself has almost no room left.
Distances from Guanajuato
| Place | km | Time | How |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bajío airport (BJX), Silao | 30 | 30 min | Hwy 110, taxi or shuttle |
| Dolores Hidalgo | 55 | 1 h | Hwy 110 north-east |
| León | 55 | 50 min | Hwy 45D toll |
| San Miguel de Allende | 90 | 1 h 30 | Hwy 110 via Dolores Hidalgo |
| Querétaro | 155 | 2 h | Hwy 45D, Hwy 57D |
| Aguascalientes | 165 | 2 h | Hwy 110, Hwy 45D |
| Morelia | 165 | 2 h 15 | Hwy 43 south |
| San Luis Potosí | 190 | 2 h 15 | Hwy 110, Hwy 57D |
| Guadalajara | 290 | 3 h 30 | Hwy 45D, Hwy 80D |
| Mexico City | 370 | 4 h | Hwy 45D, Hwy 57D |
Mines, quarters and the hills above
Silver made the town. Ore was found on the Veta Madre, the mother lode that runs north-west to south-east under the city, within a few years of the settlement's founding in 1559, and by the late 18th century the district was among the largest silver producers in the world. The Valenciana mine, 5 km north on the rim, was the richest of them; the church its owner paid for, the Templo de San Cayetano, was finished in 1788 and stands beside the shaft head. UNESCO inscribed the historic town together with its adjacent mines on the World Heritage list in 1988, and the mine workings are the reason the boundary extends well outside the ravine.
Downhill from the Jardín de la Unión, the Mercado Hidalgo occupies an iron-framed hall opened in 1910 for the centenary of independence. A few blocks west is the Alhóndiga de Granaditas, the 1809 grain warehouse where the royalist garrison made its stand in September 1810 and which later held the heads of Hidalgo, Allende, Aldama and Jiménez in cages on its corners for a decade; it is now the regional museum. The Callejón del Beso, a lane in the Barrio del Truco narrow enough for facing balconies to touch, and the Museo de las Momias at the municipal cemetery, where mineral-rich soil naturally preserved bodies disinterred from the 1860s, are the two most visited stops after the centre.
South-east, the Paseo de la Presa runs between 19th-century mansions up to the Presa de la Olla, a reservoir finished in 1749 to supply the mines and now the city's park. Thirty-five kilometres west, on the Cerro del Cubilete at about 2,700 m, the Cristo Rey statue marks what Mexican geographers long treated as the geographic centre of the country. The Bajío region map, the state map and the road map place the city in the wider network.
Questions about Guanajuato
Where is Guanajuato on the map of Mexico?
In the centre of the country, at about 2,000 m in the hills on the northern rim of the Bajío. It is 370 km north-west of Mexico City, 55 km from León and 90 km from San Miguel de Allende.
Why does Guanajuato have tunnels under the streets?
The city was built along the bed of the Río Guanajuato, which flooded it repeatedly. After dams and a diversion took the river away, the stone-vaulted channel under the centre was paved and opened to traffic in the 1960s. Later bores were added, and several kilometres of tunnel now carry most through traffic below the historic streets.
How far is Guanajuato from San Miguel de Allende?
About 90 km by road via Dolores Hidalgo on Highway 110, roughly 1 hour 30 minutes by car. Direct buses run several times a day; there is no rail link.
What is the Cervantino festival?
The Festival Internacional Cervantino, held every October since 1972 and the largest performing-arts festival in Latin America. It grew out of short Cervantes plays staged in the city's plazas by university students, and it still uses the squares, the Teatro Juárez and the Alhóndiga as venues.
Is Guanajuato safe to visit?
The city and its surrounding hills are far quieter than the state's industrial corridor around Celaya, Irapuato and Salamanca, where fuel theft and cartel conflict have driven high homicide totals. The US State Department issues its advisory for the state as a whole; check the current wording before travelling.