Huamantla

Huamantla is a tidy agricultural town under La Malinche with two obsessions: bulls and carpets. The carpets are its glory - alfombras of dyed sawdust, flowers and seeds laid in intricate geometric and religious designs, a craft practiced here to a refinement matched in few places on earth. Small carpets appear for festivals through the year, but the summit is la Noche que Nadie Duerme - "the night nobody sleeps" - on August 14, when townspeople work through the dark laying kilometres of continuous carpet along the streets for the dawn procession of the Virgin of Charity, which walks the artwork to pieces as it passes: months of design, one night of making, one morning of glorious destruction. The following weekend the Huamantlada sends bulls through the streets in a running that fills the town with adrenaline and argument. Between fiestas, the National Puppet Museum - honoring the celebrated Rosete Aranda marionette dynasty born here - and a bullfighting museum keep the identity on display.

History

The name is read from Nahuatl as "place of aligned trees". The first settlement lay south of the present city and was one of thirteen villages in a union that lasted from 1800 to 1200 BCE, with about 3,500 people at its height; the colonial town itself was founded in the 1530s (Wikipedia, Huamantla).

What to look for

• The sawdust carpets - kilometre-scale dyed alfombras at festival time.
• The all-night making - families laying designs until dawn on August 14.
• The Puppet Museum - the Rosete Aranda marionette tradition.
• La Malinche - the volcano wall above the fields.

When to go

August 14-15 for the carpets and procession - book beds far ahead or day-trip from Puebla. Year-round, weekends bring smaller carpet displays and market life.

Before you go

Festival night is crowded, sleepless and unforgettable in equal measure. The bull-running weekend is chaotic and not to every taste - know which event you are attending. Outside fiestas this is a quiet farm town.

Nearby

Cantona's ruins, the Malinche trailheads and Tlaxcala city all sit within an hour.

Key facts