Mexico’s Fourth-Largest City Might Be Its Most Underrated
Puebla retains a historical charm harder to find in Mexico’s other urban jungles.
Unless you’re a native Mexican or a history buff, chances are you’d overlook a nearly 500-year-old city in central Mexico called Puebla, maybe even mistaking it for the Spanish word pueblo, which would suggest the country’s fourth-largest metropolis is in fact a tiny town.
Puebla is much more, an industrial giant where Volkswagen and Audi make cars. But it also retains a historical charm harder to find in Mexico’s other urban jungles, and unlike tiny San Miguel de Allende or massive Mexico City, foreigners are scarce here. You could walk the city’s gorgeous downtown for hours and not hear a single English word.
Alejandro Cañedo Priesca would like to change that, not because he’s eager to see foreigners invade Puebla but because he’s proud of his home town and has spent a career telling its story.
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Priesca worked as a travel agent here for more than 25 years before becoming the city’s secretary of economy and tourism.
“We are the capital city of Mexican food, history, and world heritage. The Spanish Academy of Gastronomy this year named Puebla the capital of cultural gastronomy in Latin America,” Priesca says. “A lot of things that happened in Mexico started in Puebla, and people like me are very proud of this.”
He’s not exaggerating. The Mexican Revolution itself has roots in Puebla: In 1910, three brothers conspired to overthrow the Porfirio Dias government. While their plot was exposed and their house surrounded and attacked by federal troops, the street where this battle took place is not only a fine place to revisit history but to buy all manner of handmade chocolates and candies.
And while Cinco de Mayo is an unimportant event in most of Mexico, Puebla is where the date matters most. It’s where in 1862 Ignacio Zaragoza’s troops fought the forces of Napoleon III in the Battle of Puebla, driving the French back to Europe. Many Mexicans find it puzzling that their neighbors to the north have adopted Cinco de Mayo as an annual excuse to pound margaritas and tequila shots. In Puebla, they get it, celebrating the holiday each year with a parade, several days of concerts, and other lectures.
While the city’s 3.3 million people are spread out across 210 square miles, the best of Puebla can be explored on foot, especially Baroque and Renaissance architecture in the downtown area that earned it Unesco World Heritage status.
The Zocalo is “one of the great achievements of colonial urban planning,” the organization says on its website, as its Renaissance grid design influenced the way colonial cities across the country built their own downtowns. Few are better equipped than Priesca to design a tour here.
STAY
While there are ample hotels across the city, Priesca’s favorite choice is Banyan Tree Puebla, once a Rosewood property that the Asian brand reimagined in 2017.
“It was built to the highest standard of any hotel in Puebla,” Cañedo says. “And they’ve kept that up.”
The 19th-century hotel was once three separate Renaissance- and neoclassical-style private homes, merged together to create the hotel. There’s a spa, a subterranean bar with a tunnel that connects to the Plaza de las Trinitarias, where guests can see the ruins of the first Franciscan convent in Puebla. Three restaurants occupy the property, including one that serves world-class Italian fare and another on the rooftop that offers creative twists on Thai food. The terrace features views of Puebla’s two iconic and active volcanoes that are known to put on an ash-spewing show, from time to time.
EAT
Cañedo promises the food in Puebla is as good as anywhere in the country. The city’s most well-known restaurant is perhaps El Mural de los Poblanos, named for the gorgeous mural that depicts some of the city’s most important figures throughout history.
The food is upscale but reasonably priced and an homage to Puebla’s history. Puebla is also known as the birthplace of one of the most common kinds of molé, that thick, brown sauce said to be invented by a couple of nuns from the Convent of Santa Rosa back in the 16th century who were desperate to mask the dubious flavor of an old turkey, the only thing they had on hand to serve a visiting archbishop. That necessity-inspired invention went on to become one of Mexico’s most-beloved culinary exports, but Puebla is still home to ample molé poblano dishes. El Mural does a dozen different dishes featuring mole, including a tasting menu of different styles. The restaurant was named among the world’s 1,000 best restaurants and on a list of 120 best restaurants in Mexico.
“The Spanish Academy of Gastronomy this year named Puebla the capital of cultural gastronomy in Latin America,” Priesca says.
Another of Cańedo’s picks for places to try molé is Augurio, which does contemporary food with old recipes. Try the enchiladas Agustinas, a dish that features both the famed molé Poblano but another of the city’s important foods: chiles en nogada, whose white walnut sauce, red pomegranate seeds and green parsley that dress it up like the Mexican flag. Casa Reyna, Cañedo’s pick for breakfast, makes a dish with “huaxmole,” a traditional recipe using guaje seeds, chiles, and goat meat. Other favorites include La Chiquita Poblana, a good place to sample not just mole but another ancient Mexican recipe, the pumpkinseed sauce known as pipian.
DRINK
Aside from the rooftop at Banyan Tree, which is the city’s best place to watch the sun drop behind Mount Popocatépetl (Popo for short), Cañedo’s top watering holes include Attico 303. It’s a bar just in front of the Puebla Cathedral and has a lovely rooftop of its own, with sweeping views of the church and the rest of downtown. Another good spot is the Royalty Hotel, also in the Zocalo, which has a rooftop bar that serves up mezcalites, mezcal’s answer to the margarita.
EXPLORE
From the hotel, it’s an easy and safe walk to the 23-karat gold-drenched Capilla del Rosario, the Templo de San Francisco, and Puebla Cathedral—which took 300 years to complete and which Cañedo describes as the “best cathedral in Latin America”—and some of the city’s 41 museums.
The 23-karat gold-drenched Capilla del Rosario.
Due to its elevation —Puebla stands at some 7,000 feet—it’s rarely too hot, while still close enough to the equator to keep temps from dropping to frigid levels. The Zócalo, Puebla’s main square, is always brimming with activity, and it’s the gateway to that Cathedral, which Cañedo calls the best example of Baroque art in the country. From the main square, it’s a short stroll to the Calle de los Dulces (sweet street), where that Cinco de Mayo battle was fought, and any number of museums. Cañedo’s favorites include the Museo de la Revolución and the newer International Museum of the Baroque.
Among Puebla’s most unique offerings is the Biblioteca Palafoxiana, the oldest public library in the Americas, a collection begun by Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, who donated 5,000 books to the College of San Juan to start it. The collection has since swelled to 42,000 books, dating from 1473 to 1910, immaculately preserved. “If you come to Puebla,” Cañedo says, “you have to go here.”
If you’ve spent a day or two soaking up all that Puebla’s downtown has to offer, consider Cholula, the former indigenous settlement that is home to a great pyramid and that shares its name with the ubiquitous hot sauce. It’s a 20-minute Uber from downtown and features some rich prehispanic offerings. Further out of the city lies Atlixco, an escape from urbanity where travelers can swim, bike, and hike.
