View of San Miguel de Allende
Located about 274 km (170 mi) NW of Mexico City at an elevation of 6,500 feet, San Miguel de Allende (SMA) has an excellent climate, warm and friendly people, a rich heritage and designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city has a population of around 140,000 (mas o menos), about 10,000 of which are expatriates, mostly from Canada and the United States.
The surrounding area is agriculturally rich while SMA’s historic and economic legacy is the nearby silver mines which in the 16th century drove the growth of this city into a major center.
This is the birthplace of Ignacio Jose de Allende (January 21, 1769 – June 26, 1811) a national hero of Mexico, which accounts for San Miguel adding de Allende to the town’s name in his honor. Allende, a captain of the Spanish Army in Mexico, came to sympathize with the Mexican independence movement, and his subsequent fight for independence eventually cost him his life at the hands of the Spanish colonial leaders.
Skipping ahead to the modern period, in the late 1930s, SMA attracted some prominent artists and writers including Stirling Dickenson, an American who came here in 1938. In the 1940s, Dickenson established the Instituto Allende. Another art and cultural school established around the same time is the Escuela de Bellas Artes. Both schools would find success after the Second World War as U.S. veterans studying under the G.I. Bill were permitted to study abroad and some chose these schools to study art.
Today SMA is colonial Mexico at its best with cobbled streets, arts and native crafts, an array of restaurants, music and much more.
Condé Nast Traveler magazine in its recent annual poll asked readers to select their top 50 destinations in the world, and once again, San Miguel de Allende was on the list.
It is easy to see why.
El Jardin, the Heart of San Miguel