Mexico's Baroque capital — where over 70 Talavera-tiled churches crowd a UNESCO colonial centre, mole poblano was invented in a convent kitchen, and the Cinco de Mayo battle was fought on this very ground
Puebla is a city of 1.7 million in the state of the same name, 130km southeast of Mexico City on the Altiplano at 2,135m, with Popocatépetl visible on clear days. Its UNESCO World Heritage historic centre contains the highest concentration of Baroque architecture in the Americas: over 70 churches with Talavera ceramic tile facades, alongside 16th-century structures surviving from the earliest decades of New Spain. Puebla invented mole poblano and chiles en nogada; the Central de Abastos market is among Mexico's finest.
Puebla de los Ángeles was founded by Spanish colonists in 1531 on a plain between existing Indigenous settlements — one of the first planned colonial cities in New Spain, laid out on a grid rather than overlaid on a conquered city. Its position on the Camino Real to Veracruz made it New Spain's second city and a centre of Talavera ceramics, textiles, and ecclesiastical construction — the Cathedral of Puebla (1575–1649) is the second oldest in the Americas. The Battle of Puebla (5 May 1862) saw 4,000 Mexican soldiers under General Ignacio Zaragoza defeat 6,000 French Imperial troops — the orig…