San Miguel de Allende might seem little different from any other quaint colonial town. Its distinct character, though, is soon apparent: San Miguel’s primary function today is as a picture-perfect version of Mexico for tourists, and its home to hundreds of artists and writers, as well as flocks of foreign students drawn to the town’s several language and arts schools. More visibly like Álamos and several towns in Baja California it has attracted a large population of US and Canadian expats and property prices here are on a par with San Francisco. Now something like twenty percent of the population are foreigners, some ten thousand of whom live in the vicinity more or less permanently, generally in peaceful co-existence with the locals. Yet despite all this, San Miguel retains an undeniable charm; the colonial centre remains wonderfully preserved architecturally, and still serves as the spiritual centre of the Mexican community get up at dawn and its cobbled, hilly streets are hauntingly beautiful and quite unlike anything else in the Baíjo. There are few major sights, but the whole town (which has been a national monument since 1926, hence no new buildings, no flashing signs and no traffic lights) is crowded with old seigneurial mansions and curious churches. For all its popularity, the town is a pleasant place to rest up for a while in comfort. The town was founded in 1542 by a Franciscan friar, Juan de San Miguel, and as “San Miguel El Grande” became an important supply centre for the big mining towns, and a stopover on the main silver route from Zacatecas. The name was later changed to honor Ignacio Allende, a native who became Hidalgo’s chief lieutenant during the 1810 Revolution. What got it started as a magnet for foreigners, though, was the foundation in 1938 of the Escuela Universitaria de Bellas Artes by Peruvian artist Felipe Cossio del Pomar, an arts foundation that enjoyed an enormous boost after World War II when returning American GIs found that their education grants could be stretched much further in Mexico; Pomar re-located the school in 1950 as today’s well-respected Instituto Allende. The country is increasingly being taken over by tourist activities: attractions include hot springs, a nearby golf course, horse-riding at a couple of dude ranches and mountain-biking.

El Jardín Principal, San Miguel’s main plaza, which is within walking distance of almost everything you’ll want to see and the main focus of activity in town, on Sundays traditional Mexican bands play live music throughout the afternoon. The Instituto Allende, south of the centre and a fairly easy walk from here, is an alternative hub, and an especially useful source of information for anyone who wants to stay in San Miguel longer than a couple of days. Wherever you go in town, it seems that any place that’s not a café or restaurant is operating as some kind of gallery or artesanía shop. The stores offer a bewildering array of top-notch goods from all over Mexico. There are really too many quality places to be very specific, but as a starting point Canal, Umarán and Zacateros streets immediately south and west of the Jardín.

The most famous of the city’s landmarks, La Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel (daily 6am–9pm) the parish church takes up one side of the Jardín. This gloriously over-the-top structure, with a towering pseudo-Gothic façade bristling with turrets and spires, was rebuilt in 1880 by a self-taught Indian stonemason Zeferino Gutiérrez. Gutiérrez supposedly learned about architecture by studying postcards of great French cathedrals and then drew diagrams in the dust to explain to his workers what he wanted, and the church does seem to reflect the French penchant for neo-Gothic architecture at that time. Inside, the patterned tilework of the floor, the azulejos along the walls and the pure semicircular vaulting along the nave exhibit distinct Moorish influences. Look out for the Cristo de la Conquista, a revered sixteenth-century image of Christ, and the small shrine to San Judas Tadeo, littered with small photos and votive offerings. Ex-president Anastasio Bustamante (1790–1853) spent his last days in San Miguel, and is buried in the crypt. Opposite the church is a block containing the former Presidencia Municipal (site of Mexico’s first independent city council in 1810), and the Galería San Miguel, one of the most prestigious of the many galleries showing local artists’ work. The remaining two sides of the square are lined with covered portales, under whose arches vendors of drinks and trinkets shelter from the sun, with a row of shops behind them. On the Jardín, too, are some of San Miguel’s most distinguished mansions, all of them like almost every home in San Miguel built in the Spanish style. The Casa de Don Ignacio de Allende, on the corner of Allende and Umarán, was the birthplace of the Independence hero: a plaque notes Hic natus ubique notus – “here was born he who is famous everywhere”. The house now operates as the Museo Histórico de San Miguel de Allende (Tues–Sun 9am–5pm), completely renovated in 2009, with a five-minute introductory video and a ground floor of fossils, pots and diagrams exploring Mexico’s pre-Hispanic and colonial past, naturally concentrating on the San Miguel area and the great man himself. The second floor has been restored in period style, to reflect the lives of wealthy townsfolk in the eighteenth century, with an oratory, kitchen and various living rooms ending with a small exhibit on the start of the 1810 uprising. Around the next corner, at Canal 4, you can see the Casa del Mayorazgo de la Canal with an elaborately carved doorway and elegant wroughtiron grilles over the windows. Near here, too, just half a block down Umarán at no. 4, is the Casa del Insurgente, former home of revolutionary hero Juan de Mafuele, but better known as the Casa de los Perros, for its central balcony supported by little stone dogs.

The Mercado Ignacio Ramirez lies north of here and has managed to remain almost entirely traditional, with fruit, vegetables, medicinal herbs, pots and pans all on display. Behind the regular market along Andador Lucas Balderas lies the Mercado de Artesanías, crammed with the sort of handicrafts you see all over Mexico (folk art, pottery, colourful textiles, cut glass, papier-mâché and silver jewellery), though little of what’s here seems especially good value. You’ll find much more exciting goods in the many crafts shops around town. The Centro Cultural Ignacio Ramírez “El Nigromante” (also known as Bellas Artes; daily 9am–7pm) is at Hernández Macías 75, just one block downhill from the Jardín. Housed in the romantic cloistered courtyard of the 1765 Convento de la Concepción, it’s an arts institute run by the state fine-arts organization (replacing the original school established by Felipe Cossio del Pomar here in 1938), concentrating on music and dance, but to a lesser extent teaching visual arts, too. Around the courtyard there are various exhibitions, and several murals, including an entire room covered in vivid, abstract designs by Davíd Alfaro Siqueiros from the 1940s. Dedicated to the life of Ignacio Allende, the mural was left unfinished after Siqueiros fell out with the school’s owner. There’s also the lovely Las Musas café. The Templo de la Immaculada Concepción, part of the complex, is nice, too, and notable mainly for its tall dome raised on a drum, again said to be the work of the untrained Zeferino Gutiérrez in 1891, this time modelled on Les Invalides in Paris.

The Instituto Allende lies down at the bottom of the hill at San Antonio 22, an eighteenth-century mansion with a particularly fine facade, and opposite, the old building that served as a jail for the Inquisition. The Instituto itself, on the edges of the old town, occupies a former 1730s hacienda of the Condes de la Canal it was established here in 1950 by Felipe Cossio del Pomar and was later accredited by the University of Guanajuato. It offers courses in all kinds of arts, from painting to sculpture to photography, in crafts like silverwork and weaving, and Spanish-language instruction at every level, all within verdant, park-like grounds. Parque Benito Juárez was created out of the fruit orchards that belonged to many of the city’s old families. The homes round about are still some of the fanciest in town. From here it’s an uphill walk to El Chorro, the little hill whose springs supply the city with water, and the site of the town originally founded by Juan de San Miguel. Here you’ll find the Lavanderos Públicos, a series of twenty old-fashioned tubs where some locals still come to do their washing (and gossip). From the lavandería the Paseo del Chorro winds uphill to a series of seven former public bathhouses, which now form part of the Casa de la Cultura (Mon–Fri 9am–8pm, Sat 4–8pm), another popular location for classes, events and shows. To get the best views over town you’ll have to climb higher (follow Bajada de Charro) to El Mirador, the viewing point on the road to Querétaro, where there’s a little belvedere, a small café and San Miguel spread out below, with the broad plain and a ridge of mountains behind.

When you’ve had your fill of swanky cafés and artesanía shopping, consider spending a few hours at the Jardín Botánico, 1.5km northeast of town (daily dawn–dusk). Officially known as El Charco del Ingenio, it sprawls over the hill above town, just behind a suburb of some of San Miguel’s finest new homes, almost all colonial in execution but with every amenity. The garden itself resembles almost any patch of northern Mexico desert, but comes heavily planted with various types of cactus, which has made it incomparably richer botanically than the surrounding desert. Around 10km of grassy paths wind through, some accessible to mountain bikes. If you’re here around a full moon, check the website for details of the temazcales, ritual herb steam baths built within the garden, and open to the public. To get to the Jardín Botánico, follow Homobono east from the market, walking steeply uphill taking the left turn when it forks. After ten minutes or so you reach one of the pedestrian entrances.

One of the easiest and most enjoyable outings from San Miguel is to spend a good part of the day at one of the local hot springs, where the warm thermal waters. There are numerous hotels and mini-resorts with geothermal pools all around the area, but the best and easiest to reach are clustered around 9km to the northwest of town on the road to Dolores Hidalgo. The most popular (certainly with San Miguel’s wintering Americans) is La Gruta (daily 8am–5pm) right by the highway at km 9.5 with a series of outdoor mineral pools at different temperatures all surrounded by lawns and banana trees. There’s even a little grotto you can swim into with an artificial waterfall, and a small and reasonably priced restaurant on site with snacks and fajitas. Around 500m before La Gruta, a side road leads just over a kilometre to Escondido (daily 8am–5.30pm), an equally appealing proposition, with small lily-filled lakes all around, cool outdoor pools and a series of small indoor ones linked by little tunnels and cascades. A day at the hot springs can be conveniently combined with a worthwhile outing to Santuario de Atotonilco (easily confused with the larger Atotonilco el Grande in Jalisco state), 5km further in the same direction, then 3km down a side road. This is a dusty, rural indigenous community whose church has come to be a centre of pilgrimage for two reasons it was founded by Padre Felipe Neri in 1740, who was later canonized, and it was from here that Padre Hidalgo, marching from Dolores to San Miguel, took the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe that became the flag of the Mexicans in the War of Independence. His comrade-in-arms Allende was married here in 1802. The six chapels of the church, liberally plastered with murals and freely interspersed with poems, biblical passages and painted statues, demonstrate every kind of Mexican popular art, from the naive to the highly sophisticated. The interiors, smothered with multicoloured frescoes and fine carvings, look resplendent after a comprehensive restoration, and the shrine was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2008.