🇲🇽 Mexico · The South and the Pacific Coast
Few cities in Mexico bring together as much beauty, history and living culture as Oaxaca de Juárez. Its historic center, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1987, is a run of cobbled streets, green stone mansions, tree-lined squares and baroque churches that culminate in the dazzling church of Santo Domingo de Guzmán, one of the jewels of Mexican baroque. But Oaxaca is not just a colonial museum: it is a city that beats to the rhythm of its indigenous peoples, its overflowing markets, its festivals and its cooking, considered among the best in the country.
Oaxaca is the heart of an extraordinarily diverse state, where dozens of indigenous peoples live side by side —Zapotec, Mixtec, Mixe, Triqui and many more— keeping their languages, their textiles, their pottery and their traditions alive. That richness turns into celebration in the Guelaguetza in July and into emotion on Day of the Dead, when the altars, the cempasúchil marigolds, the comparsas and the candlelit cemeteries make the city one of the most magical places in the world to live this celebration. Steps from the center waits Monte Albán, the ancient Zapotec capital on a hilltop, one of the great cities of pre-Hispanic Mexico.
This guide runs through the essentials of Oaxaca in a practical, friendly way: how to visit Santo Domingo and the markets, how to get up to Monte Albán, which trips to take around the Central Valleys (the Tule tree, Mitla, Hierve el Agua, the mezcal and textile workshops), where to eat mole and tlayudas and how to get around. Oaxaca is one of those destinations people fall in love with: you go for the monuments and come back for the people, the flavors and the colors. A trip into the cultural soul of Mexico.
The Valley of Oaxaca region was the cradle of one of the oldest civilizations in Mesoamerica: the Zapotecs, who around 500 BC founded Monte Albán, on a hilltop above the valley, and turned it into one of the great cities of the pre-Hispanic world, with plazas, ball courts, tombs and observatories. After Monte Albán declined, around the 8th-9th centuries AD, the Mixtecs occupied part of the region and left jewels such as the fretwork of Mitla. When the Spanish arrived, the area was under Mexica (Aztec) influence. The colonial city of Antequera —today Oaxaca de Juárez— was formally founded in 1532 on the orders of the Spanish Crown, over an earlier settlement, and was soon granted city status. During the viceregal period it prospered thanks to cochineal (an extremely valuable red dye) and to trade, and the Dominicans raised the imposing convent and church of Santo Domingo. Oaxaca gave Mexico two of its most important 19th-century presidents, both Oaxacans: Benito Juárez, a national hero of Zapotec origin and a symbol of the Reform and of the resistance to the French intervention (the city bears his surname in his honor), and Porfirio Díaz. In 1987, UNESCO inscribed the historic center of Oaxaca together with the archaeological site of Monte Albán on its World Heritage list, recognizing the exceptional value of both. Today Oaxaca is one of the cultural, artistic and culinary capitals of Mexico. The full history is on our history page.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The history of Oaxaca begins long before the colonial city, on top of a hill that overlooks the Valley of Oaxaca. There, around 500 BC, the Zapotec people founded Monte Albán, artificially flattening the summit of a mountain to build one of the most impressive cities of ancient Mexico. For more than a thousand years, Monte Albán was the political, religious and cultural capital of the Zapotecs, and at its peak it housed tens of thousands of inhabitants.
On its Great Plaza they raised temples, palaces, a ball court and a singular building (the so-called Building J or Observatory) linked to astronomy. The Zapotecs developed one of the first writing systems in Mesoamerica, a calendar and a complex set of beliefs. Among the most enigmatic remains are the 'Danzantes', slabs carved with human figures in strange postures, long interpreted as dancers or as sick people and today associated rather with captives or sacrificial victims, as an expression of the city's military power.
Around the 8th and 9th centuries AD, Monte Albán went into decline and gradually lost population, in a process shared by many great Mesoamerican cities of the period. The region was not left empty: the Zapotecs redistributed themselves across the valley and, later, came the influence of the Mixtecs, another people of great artistic refinement, especially in goldwork and architecture, as the fretwork of Mitla shows. The mark of these civilizations is the deep foundation of Oaxacan identity.
When the Spanish arrived, at the beginning of the 16th century, the Valley of Oaxaca was settled by Zapotec and Mixtec lordships and was under growing Mexica (Aztec) influence, with a garrison in the area. After the fall of Tenochtitlan, the conquistadors pushed south and founded, over an earlier settlement in the valley, the town that would give rise to today's city.
The colonial city was formally established in 1532, when it received from the Spanish Crown the title of city under the name Antequera (after the Andalusian town), although people went on calling it Oaxaca, from the Nahuatl 'Huaxyacac'. There was also an early conflict over control of the valley, since the rich region had been granted as a marquisate to Hernán Cortés himself (Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca), which created tension between the conquistador's interests and those of the Crown and the settlers.
During the viceregal period, Oaxaca prospered notably. Its wealth came above all from cochineal, an enormously valuable red dye obtained from an insect that lives on the prickly pear, which was exported to Europe and became one of the most sought-after American products. Trade and the farming of the valley financed the building of a city of cantera stone, with stately mansions, squares and, above all, an extraordinary religious heritage raised by the orders that evangelized the region, especially the Dominicans.
The most visible mark of colonial Oaxaca is its religious heritage, and within it the complex of Santo Domingo de Guzmán reigns. The Dominican order had in Oaxaca one of its great centers of evangelization and building in the south of New Spain, and through the 16th and 17th centuries it raised churches and convents all over the valley, as well as driving the Christianization of the indigenous communities.
The church and former convent of Santo Domingo, in the city, is the crowning work of that effort. Its construction went on for decades and its interior, completely covered in gilded and polychrome plasterwork, is one of the most dazzling examples of the baroque of New Spain. The famous family tree of Santo Domingo, above the entrance, is one of its most photographed images. The convent next door, after a history of various uses (including a period as a military barracks), was restored and today houses the Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca and the Jardín Etnobotánico.
Beyond Santo Domingo, the city and the valley preserve a very rich heritage of Dominican churches and old convents (such as Cuilapan, Yanhuitlán or Teposcolula), which bear witness to the order's power and influence. This religious architecture, along with an urban layout that combines Spanish grid neighborhoods with more irregular indigenous ones, is one of the features UNESCO highlighted when it inscribed the historic center on the World Heritage list.
Oaxaca holds a central place in the history of 19th-century Mexico because two of the country's most important —and most opposed— presidents came from its soil. The first and most revered is Benito Juárez (1806-1872), born in San Pablo Guelatao, up in the Oaxacan sierra, into an indigenous Zapotec family. Orphaned and a shepherd in his childhood, he came to Oaxaca without speaking Spanish well, studied, became a lawyer and entered politics, rising to governor of the state and, later, president of the Republic.
Juárez embodied the Reform Laws, which separated Church and State, and the resistance to the French intervention and the Second Empire of Maximilian of Habsburg in the 1860s. His famous maxim —'El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz' (respect for the rights of others is peace)— and his standing as the first president of indigenous origin made him one of the great national heroes. In his honor, the city of Oaxaca added the surname 'de Juárez' to its name.
The second is Porfirio Díaz (1830-1915), also Oaxacan, a distinguished soldier in the fight against the French, who came to power and governed Mexico for more than three decades (the so-called 'Porfiriato'). His long regime modernized the country but sharpened inequality, and his fall opened the way to the Mexican Revolution of 1910. That two figures so decisive and so different should have been born in the same state gives the measure of Oaxaca's weight in the making of modern Mexico.
International recognition of Oaxaca's importance came in 1987, when UNESCO inscribed on its World Heritage list a double and unique property: the historic center of Oaxaca together with the archaeological site of Monte Albán. The listing recognized, on one hand, the exceptional colonial city, with its layout, its stone architecture and its religious heritage headed by Santo Domingo; and on the other, the greatness of the ancient Zapotec capital, taking in the continuity of a history that runs from the pre-Hispanic civilizations to the viceregal city.
But Oaxaca is not only a heritage of stone: it is, above all, one of the regions with the greatest living cultural diversity in Mexico. The state is home to numerous indigenous peoples —Zapotec, Mixtec, Mixe, Chinantec, Triqui, Mazatec and many more— who keep their languages, their textiles, their pottery, their music and their traditions. That richness comes out in festivals such as the Guelaguetza, where the regions of the state show their dances and dress, and on Day of the Dead, which in Oaxaca reaches a particular intensity and beauty.
To that identity you can add its culinary prestige (the moles, the tlayudas, the mezcal, the chapulines, all part of the Mexican cooking inscribed by UNESCO as Intangible Heritage) and its artistic strength, which has produced figures such as the painters Rufino Tamayo and Francisco Toledo, a great champion of local culture. Today Oaxaca is at once a historical jewel and one of the most vibrant cultural capitals in Latin America.