Silver City of the Altiplano — the UNESCO colonial centro histórico where Benito Juárez signed Maximilian I's death warrant, opulent baroque church facades line sandstone plazas, Huichol yarn art fills the galleries, and the ghost town of Real de Catorce glows at 2,750 m above the desert
San Luis Potosí is a UNESCO World Heritage colonial city on Mexico's Central Altiplano — one of the country's most architecturally intact colonial ensembles, built on silver mining wealth extracted from the surrounding Sierra Madre Oriental from the 17th century onwards. The city's Centro Histórico is distinguished by its warm pink-limestone and sandstone baroque architecture: the Cathedral on the Plaza de Armas, the Templo del Carmen with its ornate churrigueresque facade and the exquisite Carmen chapel, the Iglesia de San Francisco with its painted tile sacristy ceiling, and the Teatro de l…
San Luis Potosí was founded as a Spanish colonial mining town in 1592, named after the Bolivian silver city of Potosí (whose deposits were then the world's largest) in hopes of replicating its wealth. Silver was indeed found in the surrounding region, and the city grew wealthy as a major silver-mining centre through the 17th and 18th centuries. The city was an important administrative centre of New Spain (the Audiencia jurisdiction extended over much of northern Mexico) and its wealth funded the baroque architectural flourishing visible today. San Luis Potosí was also the site of the Plan de…