Mexico's most beautiful colonial city — 1,113 pink-stone monuments in a UNESCO historic centre, the capital of avocado country, and the gateway to monarch butterfly sanctuaries where 100 million wings fill the trees each winter
Morelia is the capital of Michoacán state, with a population of 800,000 at 1,921m elevation in west-central Mexico. Its UNESCO World Heritage historic centre contains 1,113 historic buildings in rose-coloured Michoacán stone — a distinctive pinkish-grey ignimbrite — making it one of the most architecturally coherent colonial cities in the Americas. Michoacán produces 80% of Mexico's avocado exports and is home to the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve (UNESCO WH), where 100 million butterflies overwinter in the oyamel fir forests between November and March.
Morelia was founded in 1541 as Valladolid — named after the Spanish city — on the territory of the Purépecha (Tarasco) Indigenous people who had successfully resisted Aztec conquest. It was renamed in 1828 to honour José María Morelos y Pavón, a Michoacán-born Catholic priest and revolutionary general who became the second most important leader of Mexican independence after Hidalgo; Morelos drafted the 1813 'Solemn Act of the Declaration of Independence of Northern America' and was captured and executed in 1815. His birthplace museum is in the city centre. Morelia's Baroque-Neoclassical cathe…