Zacatecas, the silver city

A baroque city built out of the silver under it

A Spanish mining camp of the mid-16th century that became one of the most important cities of New Spain, in a ravine in north-central Mexico. The Zacateco people were already working silver and other metals in these hills long before the Spanish arrived, which is exactly why the Spanish came. The wealth built the baroque city that stands there now, listed by UNESCO for the architecture the mines paid for, with the cathedral one of the great baroque facades of the Americas. The Mexican Revolution reached it in the Battle of Zacatecas, when Francisco Villa took the town, an anniversary still marked every year. Mining is still a major industry here. A cable car runs over the city between the Cerro de la Bufa and the Cerro del Grillo, and the El Edén mine under the Grillo is open to walk through.