40 Fun Facts About Guanajuato

Which animated film based its afterlife city on Guanajuato's stacked, colourful hillside houses?

Coco's designers visited Guanajuato and drew their spirit realm as a vertical city of narrow stairs, bridges and tunnels, with each generation stacked on top of the last.

Legend promises lasting good luck to couples who do what on the third step of a narrow Guanajuato alley?

Kiss on the red-painted third step and the legend promises years of good fortune in love. The Callejón del Beso is so narrow that its facing balconies almost touch.

Guanajuato's famous mummies were dug up from the city cemetery because families had stopped paying what?

Burial fees had to be renewed to keep a niche in the cemetery; when they lapsed, workers cleared the space and found some bodies naturally preserved. Visitors were soon paying to look.

Guanajuato's name is usually traced to a Purépecha phrase meaning the hill of which small animals?

Frogs sit in the Purépecha name Quanax huato, or frog hill. An older name for the same valley, Mo-o-ti, meant place of metals.

Guanajuato city's underground roads, now full of cars and buses, were first dug in colonial times to do what?

Flood control was the aim after floods in 1760 and 1780 nearly wiped out the city. Dams built in the 1960s left the channels dry, so they were turned into streets.

Guanajuato's huge October arts festival is named after which Spanish author, who never once set foot in Mexico?

Miguel de Cervantes is honoured because the festival grew out of his short one-act plays, staged in one of the city's small plazas from the 1950s. It went international in 1972.

Which Mexican muralist was born in 1886 in a Guanajuato city house that is now a museum of his early paintings?

Diego Rivera spent his early childhood in the house. Its ground floor keeps furniture of the late 1800s, with about 100 of his lesser-known works hung on the floors above.

What is the miner El Pípila said to have tied to his back before torching Guanajuato's granary door in 1810?

A flat stone kept the musket fire off him, the story goes, as he crawled to the wooden door with tar and a torch. A giant statue of him now looks down on the city from a hilltop.

León, the most populous city in Guanajuato state, is Mexico's capital for making which everyday product?

Shoes are León's trade, and most of Mexico's footwear is made in and around the city. One story says green stains on tannery workers' aprons earned locals the nickname green bellies.

Which object did Father Hidalgo use in Dolores, Guanajuato, in 1810 to call his parish to revolt against Spain?

A bell that woke Dolores before dawn now hangs at the National Palace in Mexico City, where the president rings it each year on the eve of Independence Day.

Irapuato, Guanajuato, calls itself the world capital of which fruit?

Strawberries have been Irapuato's best-known crop for generations. Locals eat them with cream as fresas con crema, and the city is nicknamed Ciudad de las Fresas.

Which spreadable caramel, often made with goat's milk and cinnamon, has made Celaya, Guanajuato, famous across Mexico?

Cajeta is eaten straight from the jar with a spoon, spread on bread or turned into candies. Celaya's version is the one known across the country.

Thousands of pilgrims climb Cerro del Cubilete in Guanajuato each October to reach a giant bronze statue of whom?

Christ the King stands on a hill said to mark Mexico's geographical centre. It replaced a smaller statue that the government destroyed in 1928 during the Cristero War.

Which Guanajuato city's parish church got Gothic towers from a self-taught mason said to have copied postcards?

San Miguel de Allende owes its skyline to Zeferino Gutiérrez, an indigenous bricklayer who rebuilt the façade in 1880 from his own imagination as much as from any picture.

The mural-covered Sanctuary of Atotonilco in Guanajuato is nicknamed the Mexican version of which European landmark?

Sistine Chapel comparisons come from the paintings that cover its nave and ceiling. The first banner of the 1810 insurgent army, an image of the Virgin, was taken from this sanctuary.

Which metal poured out of Guanajuato's Valenciana mine in the late 1700s, making it one of the world's richest mines?

Silver from the Valenciana turned its owner into a count and paid for the gilded church beside the mine entrance. For years it yielded more than all the mines of Peru.

Which Mexican president opened Guanajuato's Teatro Juárez in 1903, when the first performance was Verdi's Aida?

Porfirio Díaz opened the theatre three decades after building began, on a site where a Franciscan convent had stood. Two bronze lions guard its front steps.

What did Spanish authorities hang from the four corners of Guanajuato's captured granary for ten years as a warning?

Rebel leaders' heads, Father Hidalgo's among them, stayed up until Mexico won its independence. They were later taken to Mexico City and eventually laid to rest beneath the Angel of Independence.

Pénjamo, Guanajuato, is one of the few places outside Jalisco legally allowed to produce which agave spirit?

Tequila may legally come only from Jalisco and a few named municipalities in four other states. Pénjamo's Corralejo brand is still made on the old hacienda of that name.

Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, is known for plaza vendors selling which treat in flavours such as beer, shrimp and mole?

Ice cream in Dolores Hidalgo is handmade from recipes passed down for generations and sold beside the parish church. Pulque and chile relleno are on the menu too.

Which former Coca-Cola Mexico chief was elected governor of Guanajuato in 1995 and president of Mexico in 2000?

Vicente Fox began at the company driving a delivery truck and rose to run its Mexican business. He grew up on a family ranch in San Francisco del Rincón.

Which star of Mexican cinema's Golden Age, nicknamed the Singing Cowboy, was born in Guanajuato city?

Jorge Negrete became an international star with a film about Jalisco that helped launch the charro genre. Fans still gather at his tomb each 5 December.

What did Álvaro Obregón lose in 1915 while defeating Pancho Villa in a string of battles across Guanajuato?

His right arm was blown off in the fighting. Obregón joked that searchers only found it by holding up a gold coin, which the missing limb jumped up to grab.

The Acámbaro figures, thousands of clay figurines from Guanajuato, became notorious for appearing to show what?

Dinosaurs beside humans thrilled creationists, but an archaeologist judged the figures fakes. A local family had been selling them to a collector for a peso apiece.

Which German director opened his 1979 film Nosferatu the Vampyre with footage he shot of Guanajuato's mummies?

Werner Herzog had first seen the mummies on a visit in the 1960s, and came back to film them himself for the opening sequence.

Which American author wrote the horror story The Next in Line after a visit to Guanajuato's mummies terrified him?

Ray Bradbury was so shaken by the sight that he wrote the story almost at once, as a way to rid himself of the fear.

Which tournament brought matches to León, Guanajuato, in both 1970 and 1986?

FIFA World Cup games came to León in 1970, including West Germany's quarter-final against England, and again in 1986. The ground also staged football at the 1968 Olympics.

Guanajuato is bordered by five states: which one lies to its east and shares a name with its own capital city?

Querétaro is the eastern neighbour. Jalisco lies to the west, Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí to the north, and Michoacán to the south, leaving Guanajuato landlocked.

Guanajuato's callejoneadas are roving musical parties through the alleys, traditionally led by which group of people?

University students started the custom, wandering with live music through alleys too narrow for cars. Some of the walks are now arranged for tourists.

Guanajuato lies at the heart of which farming region, known in colonial times as the breadbasket of New Spain?

El Bajío means the lowlands, though the region sits high on Mexico's central plateau. The international airport at Silao carries its name.

Which German naturalist stayed in a mansion on Guanajuato city's main plaza in 1803 while studying the Valenciana mine?

Alexander von Humboldt did more than inspect the geology of the fabulously rich mine: he studied the whole complex and analysed the statistics of its output.

José Alfredo Jiménez, born in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, wrote the songs that came to define which Mexican genre?

Ranchera standards poured out of him even though he played no instrument and, by a fellow singer's account, did not know what key his songs were in.

Guanajuato's alfeñique fairs sell colourful sugar-paste figures made above all for which Mexican holiday in November?

Day of the Dead is the craft's big season, when the paste is shaped into skulls, coffins, angels and animals. León holds a fair devoted to it.

Behind Guanajuato's Teatro Juárez, what carries visitors up the hillside to the giant Pípila statue and its lookout?

A funicular saves a stiff climb by stairway. At the top, visitors can go inside the statue and climb to a glass deck near the hero's shoulder.

Which river crosses Guanajuato on its way west to Lake Chapala, Mexico's largest lake?

Lerma water and the lake it feeds form what the federal government counts as Mexico's most important watershed, home to more than 100 native fish species.

Guanajuato-born Juventino Rosas wrote which 1888 waltz, a staple of fairground organs and circus trapeze acts?

Over the Waves, or Sobre las Olas, ranks among the most famous Latin American pieces anywhere. The composer's birthplace of Santa Cruz was later renamed in his honour.

Which people built Cañada de la Virgen, a pyramid complex in Guanajuato dedicated to the Sun, Moon and Venus?

Otomi builders tilted the whole platform so the Sun would pass over set points of the complex, marking the dates for sowing and harvest.

Most of Chupícuaro, an ancient pottery-making site in southern Guanajuato, has been lost since the 1940s beneath what?

A reservoir covered the ancient graves when the Solís dam was built, so the culture is known mainly from its fine red, beige and black ceramics.

Which masked Mexican wrestler battles the reanimated mummies of Guanajuato in a 1972 cult film?

El Santo fought alongside Blue Demon and Mil Máscaras in the film, which was shot in the city's own cemetery and helped make the mummies famous across Mexico.

Which American carmaker assembles full-size pickup trucks at a giant plant in Silao, Guanajuato?

General Motors builds Chevrolet and GMC trucks at Silao, and its presence helped persuade at least one rival carmaker to build in the same area.