Guadalajara, Mexico’s Emerald City of Art and Culture
Guadalajara is a modern-day Emerald City. It gleams with restaurants open to the street, trendy coffee shops and niche stores of curated art. Trees shade the streets and hanging plants are a fixture on every patio. Bright graphic art covers the cement walls behind taco stands and sculptures while fountains and grand obelisks mark major intersections. Young people, attracted by jobs and the University, fill the streets.
Our first buying trip for IdealThread took place here, and we couldn’t have chosen a better location to find friendly people and beautiful art like that created by our artists Leocadia Xitawima Reza López and those at Aralue and Casa Salud Hichol.
Colonia Americana is the core of the new and very hip Guadalajara. Avenida Chapultepec,a quintessential “main drag,” has a different restaurant, bar or dance club in every building. Casual foodie gems, like Cubil Latino and Sucursal Chapultapec (Argentine) are scattered among party venues like La Insurgente.
The center of the wide avenue is a walkway that hosts open-air markets as well as informal gatherings like the women’s hip-hop collective that freestyles there every Friday night.
On Sunday mornings, Chapultapec is closed to autos, and bicyclists, roller skaters and wanderers take over the street. While the human populace takes a casual approach to Sunday morning, the dogs of Guadalajara show up to Chapultapec looking their best. Guadalajara is a dog lover’s city, and hardly a person passes a puppy without offering a comment or a compliment.
A more traditional street scene can be found in the historic Centro, where narrow brick streets wind their way to the plaza of the grand Cathedral, a gorgeous example of Spanish Renaissance architecture that took more than fifty years to complete. El Centro is also home to the Arena Coliseo where Lucha Libre wrestlers fight it out each week in a surreally fun, choreographed show.
In the Plaza, you can choose between expensive sit-down restaurants, street food and oversized ice cream cones. Children play in the water fountain and couples line up to take pictures in front of the colorful Guadalajara city sign. Quinceanera princesses hold photo shoots, while tourists linger on the fringes. The surrounding streets will take you past a multi-story mural of Frida Khalo that incorporates the lights and music from the open windows into her flowered headdress.
The University of Guadalajara is walking distance from the Cathedral, and it's free museum is a gift to the city. Don't miss the Orozco mural there.
Guadalajara is México’s second largest city, and tourists are the minority. One of the best places locals buy fresh produce is Mercado de Abastos. It takes up several blocks with stalls selling fresh fruit, produce, meat and seafood and more. While not unfriendly, Mercado de Abastos does not cater to tourists. Visitors are advised to wear closed-toed shoes and keep their eyes on the handcarts flying up and down the aisles.
A quieter, but still busy, neighborhood, Santa Teresita, is home to textile stores, yarn shops and sewing machine repair businesses. It also has one of the best bakeries in Guadalajara. Close enough to Colonia America but more affordable, excellent coffee shops, vintage clothing stores and unique art venues are growing in number. The streets of Ste. Tere are a terrific mix of all Guadalajara offered up without a trace of pretension.
Visting Guadalajara in November adds the opportunity to participate in Día de Los Muertos, a community-wide event that remembers loved ones who have died with joyful gatherings, food, altars, marigold flowers and skeletons. A huge outdoor market wraps for what seems like miles around Parque Morales selling everything you need to make a beautiful altar for loved ones. Maneuvering through the stalls is a sensory overload of fresh baked bread, dangling skeletons and costumed Catrina’s.
It’s hard to imagine Guadalajara getting better, but in 2023 Día de Los Muertos coincided with the Gay Games XI Guadalajara. To welcome the participants, Guadalajara streamed rainbows at every opportunity, lighting up the Cathedral and central squares in color.
If it sounds like Guadalajara is magic, that’s because it is. But that doesn’t mean perfect. The car exhaust can get overwhelming, and some of the older parts of the city have the smell of poor drainage. While it still seems affordable by US standards, its growth and popularity are causing the same pressures on the working people of the city that urban renewal causes everywhere. The poverty of some of Guadalajara’s residents is a painful contrast to its newer and wealthier neighborhoods.
With all of this to offer, it seems trite to claim the best part of Guadalajara is the people, but travelers know that unwelcoming people can tarnish the experience of any city. In fact, Guadalajara is known as the city of hospitality, and it lives up to its name.
Despite the growing international recognition of their hometown, Tapatios still welcome visitors. At the hippest coffee shop, the barista remembers how you take your coffee, and the waitstaff are so genuinely friendly it seems like they might have been waiting just for you. The artists selling their products at the street fairs will answer all your questions, and if they don’t have exactly the necklace you’re looking for to give your loved one, come back in twenty minutes, and they will put it together for you. 