Chiapas · Mexico
San Cristóbal de las CasasColonial soul of the Maya highlands
Chiapas & South
Highlights
- Santo Domingo & the marketsA baroque facade fronting Chiapas’ great textile and amber market.
- Chamula & ZinacantánTsotsil Maya villages with living traditions found nowhere else.
- Sumidero CanyonBoat rides beneath kilometer-high canyon walls, an easy day trip away.
- Highland café cultureChiapas-grown coffee, cool mountain air and cobbled andadores.
About the destination
San Cristóbal de las Casas sits at about 2,200 meters in the pine-forested highlands of Chiapas — a colonial city of red-tiled roofs, cobbled pedestrian streets and cool mountain mornings. It is one of Mexico’s designated Pueblos Mágicos, and its ornate Santo Domingo church fronts a sprawling artisan market famous for Chiapanecan textiles and amber.
The city is the cultural crossroads of the Tsotsil and Tseltal Maya world: the nearby villages of San Juan Chamula and Zinacantán maintain religious traditions and dress found nowhere else, while day trips reach the 1,000-meter walls of Sumidero Canyon and the highland lakes and waterfalls deeper in Chiapas. Coffee from the surrounding sierra fuels an outsized café culture.