Querétaro

What earned Querétaro its listing is unusual: the old town preserves two town plans at once, the rigid Spanish grid of the colonists and the twisting lanes of the indigenous quarter beside it, laid out together in the sixteenth century and never merged. The centre is full of small plazas linked by pedestrian alleys, with a convent church whose interior is thick with gilt and an eighteenth-century aqueduct of 74 arches, some nearly thirty metres high, striding across a valley on the edge of the city. Querétaro is also the base for the Sierra Gorda missions and for a wine and cheese route that has grown quickly on the plateau to the north.

History

The area was settled around AD 200 by Mesoamerican groups moving north, with Teotihuacan influence, and in the later pre-Hispanic period it was Otomi country, part of the Otomi dominion of Xilotepeque under the Aztecs, who under Ahuizotl ruled it directly as a bulwark against the Chichimeca. The Spanish city was founded on 25 July 1531, when Hernán Pérez Bocanegra arrived with the allied Otomi leader Conín, later Hernando de Tapia; chronicles say the battle with the local Otomi and Chichimecas on the hill of Sangremal ended when an eclipse struck and the Spanish claimed to see Saint James on a white horse, hence the name Santiago de Querétaro. Between 1726 and 1738 the Marquis Juan Antonio de Urrutia y Arana built the aqueduct of 74 arches, 1,280 metres long, for the nuns of Santa Clara, and the gatherings of Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez led to the Conspiracy of 1810, discovered that September, which made the city one of the cradles of independence. In 1867 the Emperor Maximilian was defeated in the siege of Querétaro and executed on the Cerro de las Campanas, in 1917 the Constitution was promulgated here, and in 1996 the historic centre became a World Heritage Site (Wikipedia, Querétaro (city)).

What you'll find

• The aqueduct - 74 arches up to thirty metres high across the valley.
• The two town plans - Spanish grid and indigenous lanes side by side.
• Santa Rosa de Viterbo - a convent church of extravagant gilded interior.
• The plazas and andadores - small squares linked by pedestrian alleys.

When to go

October to May is dry and pleasant; at around eighteen hundred metres the city is mild year-round with cool evenings. Summer brings afternoon storms. The plazas are at their best in the early evening when the city comes out to eat.

Good to know

It is a prosperous industrial and business city, so the historic core is a small part of a large modern sprawl and the drive in is unappealing. There is no single showpiece monument on the scale of Guanajuato or Zacatecas; the appeal is the texture of the streets. Weekend crowds from Mexico City fill the centre.

Nearby

The Sierra Gorda missions are three and a half hours northeast; San Miguel de Allende is an hour north.

Key facts