Destination: Mexico : The Many Faces of Zacatecas : With its pink-stone cathedrals, tile-roofed houses, exquisite mask collection and hotel built in a bullring, this sky-grazing mountain town is a gem however you look at it.

Fly south, find your way to these twin hills 190 miles northeast of Guadalajara, and prepare for an auspicious introduction.

Your first proper view of this town could be of the aerial tramway, its tiny twin cabins strung above a tile-roofed mining town that dates to the 16th Century.

Or you may keep your eyes on the road as you enter the city, then glimpse the early morning shadows dancing amid the pinkish stone curlicues chiseled into the facade of the 240-year-old cathedral in the middle of town.

A contrarian might skirt the city center altogether, proceed directly to the bougainvillea-draped ruin of the old San Francisco convent--and look up to find 2,900 fearsome faces, one of the largest mask collections in the Americas, staring back.

All these experiences came my way in Zacatecas over the course of two days and two nights last month. But on the night a Times photographer and I arrived, most of the place was obscured in darkness. And so, for our introductory experience, we settled for the grounds of the Hotel Quinta Real.

Which used to be a bullring. Which lay, floodlit, ocher-hued and coliseum-like, beneath the 39 towering sandstone arches of the town’s 18th-Century aqueduct. Which featured a bar in the stonewalled pens where bulls once snorted, and a two-level restaurant where privileged aficionados once looked down upon the bloodletting.

In other words, no matter when or how you arrive, the little-known city of Zacatecas is likely to present a lasting first impression.

*

Set in rugged hills 8,000 feet above sea level--and far from any sea--the city is even less known to Americans than is its underestimated silver-mining sibling, Guanajuato, about 200 miles to the southeast. As recently as 1989, Zacatecas was sufficiently uncompromised by the 20th Century that it was chosen as the shooting site for the film “Old Gringo,” which was set in the Chihuahua of 1910 and starred Jane Fonda, Gregory Peck and Jimmy Smits.

The air is thin and clear, though dramatic clouds did convene above town each afternoon of our two-night visit and afternoon showers are common in the warm summer months. The architecture is aged and rosy, thanks to a wealth of pink-orange stone that is quarried nearby. The population is about 110,000, much of it spread among suburbs some distance from the city center. There are more handsome old churches than it is reasonable to name, let alone describe, and one can walk to almost every attraction in town. The hotel rates for double rooms are often under $50 nightly.

The Indians of the area discovered its mineral wealth, but in 1548, the Spanish took over and started to lay out a medieval-feeling city at the foot of the Cerro de la Bufa--a hill whose shape reminded early settlers of a bufa or wineskin.

Starting in the middle of things and climbing southward, a stranger finds first the cathedral, built over a period of 140 years and finally completed in 1752, its striking facade oddly facing the main drag of Avenida Hidalgo instead of the open spaces of the Plaza de Armas.

A block farther one finds the Teatro Calderon, designed in the closing years of the 19th Century as an odd combination of Spanish colonial and art nouveau architecture. Almost directly across the street from the green, yellow, red and blue stained-glass windows of the theater (which, with three balconies and a red velvet curtain inside, still houses visiting performers) stands another architectural hybrid, the Mercado Gonzalez Ortega, once a working-class marketplace made elegant by ironwork and high skylights, now an upscale collection of boutiques, gift shops and a terrace restaurant. Southward from there, the main drag climbs and bends, flanked by busy commercial enterprises.

*

Which brings us back, for just a moment, to the lobby of the Quinta Real Hotel. The night we arrived, my first act as a guest was to stagger forward to a picture window.

“This bullring is from 1866. In 1975 was the last bullfight,” recited the young bellman.

Beyond him curved the main hallway. Below, the floor of the bullring lay adorned by a star pattern of cobblestones and turf. In the bleachers stood picnic tables and parasols and hulking planters spilling over with red-orange geraniums. The 53 guest rooms were arranged around a courtyard on the ring’s periphery, each stocked with hand-painted furniture and a fireplace, most overlooking a fountain--most, to answer your foremost question, fetching $165 nightly. The hotel opened four years ago.

Its prices put the Quinta Real among the most costly properties in the country. But if any lodging in Mexico matches the novelty, drama, adaptive design and attentive service of the place, I’d be surprised. If there were a pool and tennis courts, and if there weren’t Muzak versions of “Country Roads” and “Tiny Bubbles” seeping into the dining room during dinner hours, I’d say the place was ideal.

In any event, those whose budget doesn’t have room for $165-a-night lodgings have an easy option: Stay elsewhere for one-half or one-fourth as much, and stroll up to the Quinta Real around sunset for dinner or a drink.

If you do go, leave time to circle the ring and gaze up at the aqueduct arches rising behind it, and take a stroll across the street in lush Cerro de Alicia Park, which figures prominently in the fine regional custom of the callejoneada .

Usually on a Friday or Saturday night, someone hires a marching band, provides for large amounts of alcohol, and over ensuing hours traces a route through the city streets, singing, laughing, sometimes disrupting traffic, inevitably gathering a crowd. Some cities, including Guanajuato, post signs designating official callejoneada routes, and some old-fashioned callejoneada organizers hire mules to carry their alcohol. The processions, which usually begin at a city landmark, usually end at one, as well--in the case of Zacatecas, in Cerro de Alicia Park, which offers plenty of room, a bandstand, and the inspiring view of yet another pink stone church tower, Our Lady of Fatima, a few blocks farther to the south. The Francisco Goytia Museum, once the Governor’s Palace and now a gallery of work by 20th-Century Zacatecan artists, is nearby. (On the night of our arrival, the Goytia Museum’s theater was offering a play whose title I roughly translated as “The Journalists Die by Night.” We passed.)

But if you have only time for a couple of museums in Zacatecas, the two to choose are those named for the Coronel brothers. Born into a family of immense wealth amassed from local commercial interests, Pedro and Rafael Coronel both became artists and collectors of works from around the world. In the last decade, both placed substantial parts of their collections on public display. (Pedro Coronel died in 1985. Rafael Coronel now lives and continues to paint in Cuernavaca.)

The Pedro Coronel Museum, a former school for boys, stands two blocks from the central cathedral. Downstairs, a strangely diverse library (from Italian opera texts to the presidential papers of Martin Van Buren) lines the walls. The upstairs exhibits, opened in 1983, run from pre-colonial artifacts to dozens of modern works by artists including Miro, Chagall, Goya and Picasso.

The Rafael Coronel Museum, six blocks northeast of the cathedral, only opened in 1990 and offers two extraordinary experiences on one piece of property. From 1593 to 1857, the land served as the San Francisco convent. The church now stands in 100-foot ruins, the ceilingless pink stone walls yielding to blue sky and--this is 8,000 feet above see level, remember--a brilliant sun that seems to hang just above the trees. Bougainvillea and a lush tangle of other greenery climbs and flowers all over the ruins, and a stone path leads visitors from the outdoors to a darkened exhibition area, and the masks.

Over the last 35 years, Rafael Coronel is said to have collected some 5,000 masks, and 2,942 of them are here, grinning and glowering in a rambling succession of rooms on two floors. Browsing, you see faces of devils, kings, crocodiles and bulls. They wear hair of hemp, horns, fangs, stubble, bushy eyebrows, twin noses and pig snouts. Their complexions are red, black, yellow, white and green and combinations thereof. On some walls they hang alone; on others, they peer down in battalions. One looked like Elvis. Another had a scorpion painted on the forehead. Emerging from the halls, I caught several uniquely Zacatecan elements at once. From the world of masks I stepped out into a light rain, which darkened the hues of the ruins, collected between cobblestones in the street, and halted the aerial tram in its crawl over the city.

If you’re scared of heights, you won’t even want to look up at the Zacatecas aerial tram--the teleferico --from the solid ground. But for the intrepid, it offers a perfect preface to a descent into the mines. Built by a Swiss firm, the tram stretches for 2,500 feet between a lower hill and the top of the Cerro de Bufa, hanging more than 300 feet above the city at its greatest height. From that altitude, the city reclines at your feet, interior courtyards are revealed.

As we crept along toward the church, museum and tourist shops atop the hill, Luciano Carrera, tram operator for 13 years, endured questions from me and several Mexican-born English teachers from the area, who were playing hooky from a conference. We learned that the tram is serviced by Swiss specialists every six months. That it travels at five or six feet per second. And that, to the best of Luciano Carrera’s knowledge, it has never been struck by lightning. (That last answer came in response to my question; by this time, gray clouds were massing on the horizon, and thunder was rolling across the hills.) A one-way ride costs about $1.30, and most people begin at the station on the lower hill, neighboring the Motel Bosque.

*

Then we went underground. At El Eden Mine, dug about 400 years ago and operative until about 20 years ago, visitors paying about $3 can follow a tour more than 1,000 feet beneath the stony hillside, take a 2,000-foot ride on a mine train, tiptoe across a 20-foot wood-and-rope suspension bridge, and hear descriptions (Spanish only, unfortunately) of the horrific conditions suffered by miners.

For dedicated travelers, there’s more to be investigated in and around Zacatecas: We didn’t get to the Indian ruins at Chicomostoc, about 30 miles outside town, or the convent-turned-art-museum in the neighboring town of Guadalupe. But we did make a side trip to Jerez, a former frontier town about 30 miles southwest of the city, where most men wear cowboy hats and life seems to move at half-speed. There, we watched a young bride arrive for a wedding in the 1805 Sanctuary of the Virgin of Soledad, spurned an entrepreneur who attempted to interest us in condoms, and lingered in the modest market over a pair of fresh-squeezed orange juices.

But when I run Zacatecas back through my memory, the last image I see is the spectacle we found on our last night in town. Walking home from dinner, we heard tumult along the main drag, and followed it to find our friends the English teachers, about 200 strong now, well into a rousing callejoneada . There were no donkeys in sight, but there were bottles, glasses and at the head of the mob, a blaring nine-piece brass band. With vehicular traffic hopelessly clogged behind them, they climbed Avenida Hidalgo and then Avenida Gonzalez Ortega, then settled into a night of carousing around the bandstand. They were still at it when I crawled off to sleep in my bullring.

GUIDEBOOK

Zeroing in on Zacatecas

Getting there: Zacatecas’ La Calera Airport is about 17 miles east of town. Mexicana Airlines offers a nonstop Los Angeles-Zacatecas flight with restricted fares beginning at about $330 (but it leaves at 12:15 a.m. and arrives in Zacatecas at 5 a.m.). For those interested in driving to Tijuana’s Gen. Abelardo L. Rodriguez Airport or flying there via AirLA (cheapest restricted round-trip fare, $99) or Aeromexico (cheapest fare, $118), Taesa and Mexicana airlines fly nonstop Tijuana-Zacatecas daily (restricted fares, $164 round trip). Where to stay: Quinta Real Zacatecas (Rayon 434; from U.S. telephones, 800-445-4565 or 011-52-492- 291-04). Site of a former bullring and a downhill stroll to city center; 53 rooms, restaurant, bar, spacious public rooms, no pool, tennis or golf; double, $165 nightly.

Radisson Paraiso Hotel Zacatecas (Ave. Miguel Hidalgo 703; tel. 800-333-3333 or 011-52-492-261-83, fax 011-52-492-262-45). Opened in 1989 across street from Cathedral and Plaza de Armas; 115 clean, simple rooms, restaurant, bar; double, $94 nightly.

Hotel Posada La Moneda (Ave. Miguel Hidalgo 413; tel. 011-52-492-208-81). On the main drag; 36 unfancy, somewhat weathered rooms, restaurant; double, $40.

Where to eat: La Plaza, Quinta Real Zacatecas (address and phone above). Unmatchable setting, with picture windows overlooking former bullring; generally good food (my tournedos was on the tough side, but all else was ideal); main courses $10-$24.

La Cuija (El Mercado Local T 15, Centro Comercio; tel. locally 282-75). Specializes in regional dishes; main courses $5-$17.

Also, for a cup of coffee or breakfast, Acropolis (Ave. Miguel Hidalgo and Plazuela Candelario Huizar; tel. 212-84).

For more information: Contact the Mexican Government Tourism Office (1010 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 224, Los Angeles 90067; tel. 310-203-8191).