Key facts

• Catedral de Zacatecas: the finest Churrigueresque Baroque façade in Mexico, and one of the finest in the world — built between 1730 and 1752 in the rose-pink cantera stone of the Zacatecas region; the façade (designed by Domingo Jiménez and Sebastián Coronado, then an anonymous master stonecutter from local workshops) is in the ultra-ornate Churrigueresque style (the Spanish and Mexican variant of Late Baroque in which every architectural surface is covered with densely packed sculptural ornament — saints, foliage, shells, cherubs, columns wrapped in vines — to the point where the underlying architectural structure becomes almost invisible); the west façade of Zacatecas Cathedral is consistently cited as the supreme example of the style in the Americas; the interior (five naves, rebuilt in the 19th century) is comparatively plain, so the full experience is exterior
• Cerro de la Bufa and the mines: the hill that defines Zacatecas — the Cerro de la Bufa (3,028 m, 500 m above the historic centre, accessible by aerial cable car — the teleférico de Zacatecas, the first cable car in Mexico, 1969) carries on its summit the Mausoleum of the Zacatecas Heroes, the sanctuary of the Virgin of the Patrocinio (a 17th-century pilgrimage church), and a panoramic platform with the most complete view of the colonial city and its canyon geography; the Mina El Edén (Eden Mine), the most important silver mine in the Zacatecas area during the colonial period (active 1586–1960s), is open to visitors with guided tours through the underground workings (the main shaft, 380 m underground, 3 km of tunnels); the mine also houses a disco (Bar El Mina, accessed through the mine entrance — claimed to be the deepest bar in the world)
• The pink cantera stone: the architectural material that gives Zacatecas its distinctive identity — a rose-pink volcanic tuff quarried from the Zacatecas mountains; the colour is caused by traces of iron oxide in the stone and ranges from pale blush to deep salmon depending on the quarry and the time of day (the buildings glow pink-orange at sunset in a particularly photogenic way); the stone is soft enough to carve in the elaborate detail required for Churrigueresque ornament and durable enough to survive the high altitude climate; the combination of the pink colour and the Churrigueresque carving quality gives Zacatecas its immediate visual identity among all Mexican colonial cities
• Rafael Coronel Museum: the most unusual museum in Mexico — the Rafael Coronel collection (housed in the restored ruins of a 17th-century Franciscan convent, with roofless cloisters where the collection spills across multiple floors) contains approximately 16,000 pre-Columbian ceramic masks (the largest collection of indigenous masks in the world), plus the original puppet and marionette collection of Diego Rivera’s daughter (Rivera was born in Guanajuato, the Zacatecas area was his grandmother’s homeland), and an extraordinary collection of pre-Columbian art from the Mexican west coast; the museum is typically deserted except for a few visitors and the experience is unusually intimate for a collection of this importance
• The Battle of Zacatecas (1914): the decisive battle of the Mexican Revolution — on 23 June 1914, the rebel general Francisco “Pancho” Villa led his División del Norte (30,000 men) in a direct assault on the federal garrison of 12,000 troops defending the Cerro de la Bufa; the battle (12 hours) resulted in a complete rebel victory and the destruction of the Federal Army as an effective fighting force; it was the largest and most violent single battle of the Revolution; the Mausoleum of the Zacatecas Heroes on the Cerro de la Bufa commemorates the battle and contains the remains of the rebel commanders; a re-enactment is held annually on 23 June
• Heritage: UNESCO World Heritage Site, Historic Centre of Zacatecas, inscribed 1993
• GPS: 22.7709° N, 102.5733° W