Guanajuato

We booked a tour with Discovery Tours to visit the city of Guanajuato. An hour to the west of San Miguel, Guanajuato is the capital of the Mexican state Guanajuato. We were the only ones on the tour today so we had a wonderful personal day tour with an equally wonderful and knowledgeable guide, Dalí.

History

El Pípila in Guanajuato

El Pípila in San Miguel

The city of Guanajuato has several claims to fame. It is the geographic center of Mexico and is deeply steeped in the history of Mexico's War of Independence from Spain. In 1810 insurgents overwhelmed the Spanish soldiers and loyalists who had barricaded themselves in the town's granary. El Pípila, a miner from the local silver mine, rushed the granary doors while carrying a stone slab on his back to protect himself from Spanish musket balls. He carried tar and a torch to successfully burn the doors open.

A huge statue of El Pípila dominates the heights over Guanajuato. In San Miguel de Allende (SMA) there is another statue commemorating his act of bravery in a traffic circle near our local hypermarket, La Comer.  

Tunnels

In Spanish colonial days, the Spanish extracted the abundant deposits of silver from the surrounding hills. They built Guanajuato in a narrow valley beneath the mine with a river splitting the city. Over time, dams were built to expand city space. These dams, however, broke several times in the late 1770's. 

Town fathers responded in two ways. Huge stone walls facing the river were built as protection from unleashed waters giving some streets a canyon like feeling. In 1883, the expertise of the nearby mineworkers was employed to build tunnels to divert river water. Tunnels continued to be built and built and built.

By the 1960's, any lingering flood concerns were gone and the tunnels were converted to underground roads. Since the roads on the surface are extremely short and narrow (barely wide enough for one car to pass in some instances) the underground roads provide easier and faster transportation through and across town.

You can see an 8 second video of our drive through one of these tunnels at the end of this post.

Our Tour

Click to Enlarge

Our tour hit the city's highlights. We started with a panoramic view of the colorful city from a vista point where the statue of El Pípila overlooks the city. We then drove down into the center of town, parked the van, and began our tour on foot.

The Diego Rivera Home/Museum was filled with many pieces of Rivera's different phases. One pencil sketch was of a Russian woman with whom he had a son who died when he was four years old. An oil portrait done in pointillism was of a daughter he had with another woman.

Dalí in Front of Mural

However, the most spectacular piece was a 50-foot long mural of many people in a park. Each person was identifiable, including many political figures, and next to Catrina, the skeleton, Diego as a child. Frieda Kahlo, his artist wife, appears right behind him.

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was spectacularly covered in gold leaf everywhere we looked, including the huge pipe organ on the second floor in the back of the church. Many chandeliers also contributed to an atmosphere of wealth and opulence.

On the way out we were able to speak with the bell ringer. We asked if there was a pattern to how the bells were rung to tell the time. No, he replied, he just rang the bell as many times as the spirit moved him!

See our video at the end of this post.

The Don Quixote Iconographic Museum was filled with many different types of pieces of art that were all winners of the annual Don Quixote art contest. There is also a small theater inside for performing artists.

We enjoyed a marvelous lunch in an outdoor café of the Hotel Santa Fe and then returned home.