One of Mexico’s Best-Kept Secrets: The City of Queretaro, Queretaro, Mexico

If you’ve been following this blog, you’d know that my daughter and I traveled to Mexico back in May. We spent two weeks in several cities, starting in Mexico City and visiting the Museo Nacional de Arte and Teotihuacán. The plan was to head west to San Miguel de Allende but I wasn’t looking forward to the four-hour ride so a travel blog recommended a stop-over at a city called Querétaro. Never heard of it. What I would find out, however, is that Santiago de Querétaro is one of the most loveliest cities in Mexico, and still one of its best kept secrets.

Known simply as Querétaro, it is located in central Mexico, about 132 miles northwest of Mexico City. The area of Querétaro was settled around A.D. 200 by Mesoamerican groups moving north. In the later pre-Hispanic period, the area was populated by the Otomí (Indigenous peoples of Mexico) and for the next several centuries, the Otomí (and to a lesser extent, the Tarascan and Chichimeca) were the ruling tribes in the region. In the mid-13th century, the region was conquered by the Aztecs and in 1521, the Spanish arrived in Mexico and soon conquered indigenous populations all over the country. The city of Santiago de Querétaro was officially founded on July 25, 1531. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).