Atlixco

Atlixco grows the country's flowers. Blessed with what locals unblushingly call the best climate in the world - warm, frost-free and irrigated by Popocatepetl's snows - the town and its valley run hundreds of nurseries and greenhouses that ship poinsettias, marigolds, azaleas and bedding plants across Mexico; entire barrios smell like a florist's cold room. The pueblo magico center climbs from a jacaranda-shaded zocalo of Talavera-trimmed arcades toward the Cerro de San Miguel, whose stations-of-the-cross stair ends at a little chapel with the classic full-length portrait of Popocatepetl - close enough here to fill half the sky, smoking obligingly for photographs. Seasons set the calendar: marigold fields blaze before Day of the Dead, the Villa Iluminada strings a winter avenue of lights, poinsettia weeks turn the valley red, and September's Huey Atlixcayotl festival gathers Puebla's indigenous delegations for dance on the hill. Weekend visitors add cecina - Atlixco's famed salted beef - to the reasons.

History

The name comes from Nahuatl and is read as "water in the valley" or "water on the ground". The first known inhabitants were the Teochichimecas around 1100 CE; in colonial times the area grew grain, especially wheat, and had the first wheat mill in the state, and the city, founded in 1579 as Villas de Carrión, received its coat of arms from Philip II that year (Wikipedia, Atlixco).

Highlights

• The nurseries - flower fields and greenhouse lanes by the hundred.
• Cerro de San Miguel - the chapel stair with the volcano portrait.
• The zocalo - jacarandas, arcades and Talavera details.
• The seasonal spectacles - marigolds, poinsettias and the illuminated village.

When to go

Late October for marigold fields, December for poinsettias and lights, spring for jacarandas - the town cycles its colors. Clear dry-season mornings serve the volcano view best.

Practical notes

Big festival weekends jam the center and the hill stair. The volcano hides in cloud by most middays - climb early. Between spectacles, Atlixco is a pleasant market town rather than a monument city.

Nearby

Puebla's centro, the Tonantzintla church and the Popocatepetl monasteries at Huaquechula and Tochimilco are all under an hour.

Key facts