Things to do
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Día de Muertos
Book your room by spring and plan for the nights of 31 October and 1 November, when families keep candlelit vigils at the village cemeteries until morning. Ask before you photograph anyone.
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Andador Macedonio Alcalá
Closed to cars, this street through the historic centre runs from Santo Domingo towards the Zócalo, lined with craft shops and cafés. Start at Santo Domingo and walk down to the Zócalo, stopping in the shops along the way. Most of the small museums in the centre are free to enter, so one or two fit easily into the walk.
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Jalatlaco
A few blocks east of the Zócalo, a small colonial barrio of cobbled lanes and painted walls covered in street art, with coffee shops and small boutique hotels in the old houses. Most of its cafés and shops close on Sundays, so come on another day.
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Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca
Beside the church of Santo Domingo, a garden of the native plants and cacti of the state of Oaxaca. Entry is by guided tour only, at set times, and the tours fill, so book ahead or be at the gate early.
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Mercado Benito Juárez
Across from the Mercado 20 de Noviembre, a market of textiles, handicrafts, mezcal and chapulines, the toasted grasshoppers of the valley. It is packed for most of the day. Carry pesos, since the stalls deal in cash, and keep phones and wallets out of reach of pickpockets.
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Teotitlán del Valle
Wool rugs on treadle looms are the work of this Zapotec village in the foothills, dyed with cochineal insects, indigo, marigold and lichen, and families demonstrate the carding and dyeing before showing what they have woven. Carved stones from a Zapotec temple are visible in the walls of the parish church. A rug of any size represents weeks at the loom. Combine it with Tule or Mitla.
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Árbol del Tule
In the churchyard at Santa María del Tule stands a Montezuma cypress with a trunk over forty metres around, wider than it is tall and variously reckoned to be well past a thousand years old. A railing allows a full circuit in a few minutes, and local children offer to point out the animal shapes in the bark. Falling groundwater has left the tree under constant care and irrigation.
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Basílica de la Soledad
A few blocks west of the Zócalo, the basilica of the Virgin of Solitude stands above a square ringed with stalls selling nieves, the city's water ices. Buy a nieve from the stalls on the square and eat it on the church steps.
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Hierve el Agua
Mineral springs on a cliff edge east of the city have deposited calcium over millennia into two formations that hang like white frozen falls. Spring-fed pools at the top take swimmers and look out over the Sierra. The drive runs beyond Mitla, part of it on a rough track. Access is controlled by the landholding community and has closed for long stretches, so confirm before setting out.
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Mercado 20 de Noviembre
Two blocks south of the zócalo, a covered food market whose smoke alley is a row of charcoal grills: buyers choose thin beef tasajo or chorizo from a butcher, hand it over, and eat it with spring onions, nopal and tortillas at communal tables. Elsewhere under the roof are mole pastes, bread and chocolate ground to order. Lunchtime is thick with smoke and queues.
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Mitla
Geometric stone mosaics cover the walls of the Columns Group, tens of thousands of cut pieces fitted without mortar in fret patterns that repeat nowhere exactly. A Spanish church stands on an adjoining courtyard, built from the same stone it displaced. Cruciform tombs run underneath and are entered by ladder, stooping. The town lies on the Tlacolula road, often combined with the mezcal distilleries alongside.
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Monte Albán
A hilltop levelled by hand around 500 BC, where the Zapotec built a capital four hundred metres above the valley floor and held it for more than a thousand years. Carved slabs called danzantes show contorted figures, probably captives. One skewed building may track the stars. The site sits ten kilometres from town, served by shuttle vans, and offers almost no shade.
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Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca
The Dominican convent beside Santo Domingo now holds the valley's history in rooms off two storeys of cloister, from Zapotec settlement to the present. Its centrepiece is the gold, turquoise and carved bone lifted from Tomb Seven at Monte Albán in the nineteen thirties. Labels are mostly in Spanish. Windows on the upper floor look down into the ethnobotanical garden. Allow two hours; closed Mondays.
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Museo Rufino Tamayo
Pre-Hispanic figures, masks and vessels collected by the painter Rufino Tamayo fill the rooms of a colonial house on Calle Morelos, set out by form and colour in place of a timeline. Each room is painted a strong colour chosen as a backdrop for the clay and stone. Tamayo, born in Oaxaca, gave the collection to his city. An hour covers the collection, and the labels are brief Spanish captions.
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Museo Textil de Oaxaca
Close to the Zócalo, an eighteenth-century building holds a small textile collection. Entry is free, and a full circuit takes about half an hour. It makes a good first stop before a day out to Teotitlán del Valle, the Zapotec village of weaving and dyeing workshops.
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Panteón General
The general cemetery of Oaxaca City, visited during the Day of the Dead. The graves belong to local families and the observances around them are not a show staged for visitors. Keep to the paths, stay quiet, and ask before photographing anyone.
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Quinta Real Oaxaca
The former convent of Santa Catalina de Siena, founded in the sixteenth century, now a hotel a few blocks from Santo Domingo. Rooms open onto arcaded patios and fountains, and a pool sits among the old stone walls. The public rooms keep the vaulted convent architecture. The location puts the Alcalá walking street close by.
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San Bartolo Coyotepec
Black pottery is the trade of this village south of the city: clay from local pits is burnished with quartz and fired low with smoke, which turns it a metallic black. Family workshops demonstrate the hand-turned plates used in place of a wheel, and the state museum of popular art stands beside the main square. Buses on the Ocotlán road stop at the turn-off.
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Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán
Gold leaf covers the vaults, and over the entrance a polychrome vine carries the relief figures of Domingo de Guzmán's ancestors. Thick walls and squat towers were built against earthquakes, which flattened much else. The Dominicans took a century over it. Outside, the plaza fills most evenings with wedding parties, brass bands and dancers, and the facade takes the light best in late afternoon.
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Tlacolula de Matamoros
Every Sunday the streets of Tlacolula de Matamoros turn into one of the valley's oldest tianguis, with Zapotec traders selling turkeys, chapulines, pottery, flowers and barbacoa from stalls that run for blocks. The covered market and the chapel of the Señor de Tlacolula, its interior dense with silver and carving, sit at the centre. Colectivos run along the Mitla road, and Sunday is the only full day.
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Zócalo
The main square sits at the heart of the colonial grid, an easy walk from anywhere in the centre. A taxi rank stands close by: agree the fare before any ride out of town, or book through a ride-hailing app, which quotes a fixed price.
