Guanajuato, a city with an old soul

SPRAWLED along steep ravines, Guanajuato is a dusty, workaday city of narrow streets and quaint alleys, of elaborately decorated churches and mansions that seem to breathe the air of another time. Below them lies a thick warren of underground traffic tunnels, some dating from colonial days. The tunnels seem fitting in a city that owes its existence to gold and silver mines.

Artist Javier de Jesus Hernandez says the city’s soul is rooted in a distant time and place. And the Guanajuato he is talking about is not just the 500-year-old colonial relic left behind in the highlands of central Mexico by the Spaniards, who milked hundreds of silver and gold mines to feed their thirst for sparkling minerals.

His Guanajuato also is the Mediterranean city that inspired the 16th century style of pottery that he has tried to resurrect. His focus on the city’s roots permeates the soft-brown-colored Moorish-looking house here where he lives and works and shows his painting, sculptures and ceramics.

“People don’t think about their heritage,” says the middle-aged university professor and artist, who began calling himself Capelo years ago. He has tried to re-create the lush-looking majolica pottery that the Spanish brought to Guanajuato in the 16th century; though others disagree about its root, he is convinced that the name “majolica” comes from the Spanish seaside city of Malaga.

This quest to reconnect with Guanajuato’s roots intrigues me.

It sets my emotional bearings as I wander about the more-than-mile-high city. I meander most of the time on foot because the streets are so narrow that cars do not fit into the city’s historic center.

It reminds me that I am strolling through a massive museum, and my job is to appreciate the exhibits, the marked and unmarked ones. Guanajuato’s attraction is not glitzy restaurants or shops. It has an old soul and a story that it is willing to share.

Guanajuato, founded in the 16th century, had become the second most important and richest city in New Spain -- after Mexico City -- by the end of the 18th century. In 1988, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

I am staying in a 100-year-old French-style mansion-turned-boutique-hotel at the peak of the city. Tree-lined streets funnel me downward past a small park, large old houses slumbering behind high walls, shops and schools, numerous buildings from the University of Guanajuato and then ultimately into the triangular-shaped Jardin de la Union, the heart of the city.

Guanajuato’s central square, unlike those in some other Mexican cities, has a natural cover. A thick growth of carefully shaped Indian laurel trees forms a green shawl that shields from the sun black wrought-iron benches, a small bandstand where musicians perform several nights a week, and cafes and hotel restaurants where tables spill out onto the square.

Various bands descend nightly on the folks around the tables, and one night seated on a park bench I vicariously share the very public celebrations of a couple who gleefully welcome one band after another, asking for yet more romantic songs, toasting each other and occasionally dancing beside their table.

Solace and surprises

BECAUSE the mood here is more low-key than Mexico City or at any of the glitzy resorts, it seems easy to melt into the background. Unlike San Miguel de Allende, which is about an hour away, there are few other tourists, and being a stranger does not make you a magnet for unwanted attention.

On the outskirts of the city is the Museo Ex-Hacienda San Gabriel de Barrera, an 18th century neo-European-style mansion with quiet, well-cared-for gardens of various designs. It’s a place that provides an insight into the comfort enjoyed by the elite, who once benefited from Guanajuato’s mineral wealth. (Today, only about a dozen silver mines are still working.) At the entrance to the museum, now owned by the Mexican government, there’s a small cafe that offers solace on a busy day.

A nearby mountaintop holds La Valencia mine, which once churned out tons of silver. The opulence that La Valencia and other mines bestowed on the city is reflected in the Church of San Cayetano, just off the road.

Clustered close to the church’s plaza are several gift shops. Here, Detroit-born artist Randy Walz opened an arts-and-crafts store. He laments the fact that other expats are catching up with his discovery and searching for places to settle in Guanajuato.

Yet I am less moved by the spectacular vistas surrounding Guanajuato than I am by the experience of wandering in the crowded, compact city. The chances are greater that I’ll wander into surprises.

At the edge of the Jardin de la Union, I find the Teatro Juarez, an elegant four-story theater that was opened in 1903 by President Porfirio Diaz with a performance of “Aida.” It is a shining example of gaudy late-19th century designs and obsessive attention to small details. It still is used for performances, especially during Guanajuato’s Cervantes Arts Festival, which began Wednesday and continues through Oct. 23.

At night, the front steps of the theater turn into an outdoor foyer, mostly packed with students, who sit and talk.

A few steps from the theater on the same cobblestone street is another place that captures my imagination: the Museo Iconografico del Quixote. The message of the literary Spanish dreamer and hero of the downtrodden is captured in dozens of paintings, sculptures and murals that span several decades.

I cross back through the Jardin and come across another pleasant surprise, a museum marking the birthplace of artist Diego Rivera. The modest four-story home, where famed muralist Rivera was born in December 1886, is full of sketches and paintings, most of them from his early years.

I discover there is a payoff for patiently strolling through the museum when I arrive at a large fourth-floor room, which is taken up by a copy of his mural of a day in Mexico City’s Alameda Park. It is a stunning summary of Rivera’s leftist politics and lyrical embrace of Mexican history.

Stories behind the art

THEN, I set out in search of the home and workshop of Gorky Gonzalez, Guanajuato’s most famous ceramist.

My directions take me close to the city’s historic center, where I go past Guanajuato’s baseball stadium, down a quiet side street beside a cluttered, muddy stream and up to a dark, uninviting, windowless building.

Bad idea, I tell myself. If nobody answers, I’m ready to head on. Exploring doesn’t always work.

I knock on the thick, old door, which opens by itself, and climb a winding metal stairway to a second-floor store. Here I find the master’s son, also called Gorky, with his very young son, also named Gorky. For my own sense of clarity, I dub the two adults Gorky Junior and Senior.

Gorky Junior, a soft-spoken man in his mid-30s, is also a potter, though his eye is on sleeker, more modern styles of ceramics than his father’s. Without much prompting, he explains his father’s love of Guanajuato’s pottery.

Gorky Senior’s father, Rodolfo, a sculptor and antiques collector, named his son after Russian writer Maxim Gorky, the founder of social realism. One day, Gorky Senior was struck by some stunning ceramics that he had never seen before in his father’s antiques store. Rodolfo told his son it was a rare item and that the art of making such ceramics had long been forgotten in Guanajuato. Its beauty stayed with Gorky Senior as he studied art in Mexico and then, thanks to a scholarship, went to Japan in the 1960s to study ceramics.

There, he learned the ways of ancient Japanese potters and fell in love with a Japanese woman. When the young married couple returned to Guanajuato, Gorky Senior decided to rescue the majolica style of ceramics, adding his own distinctly Mexican imagination. And using the same clay that the first Spanish-trained potters used when they came to Guanajuato.

“My father says the paint of the work is made greater by the fire,” Gorky Junior tells me, “but the soul of the piece is the wheel.”

Success came. The exhibits have been many, and artists and buyers from Mexico and elsewhere came to meet Gorky Senior. Beyond the store and workrooms, the house opens into a large courtyard with a leafy garden and tall, dome-like rooms with massive glass windows that make the greenery feel like a part of the rooms.

The son’s story ends, and I am invited to meet Gorky Senior, who is sitting in the living room of his house. The air is filled with the music of tropical birdsong from the garden. Thick, white walls are covered with photographs and paintings, many by well-known Mexican artists. There are rugs and ceramics everywhere.

We sit across an enormous table carved from mahogany and mesquite, talking about his love of the traditional ceramics. “I can look at an old piece and I don’t need somebody to tell me about it. The work teaches you.”

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Mexican charm

GETTING THERE:

From LAX, Alaska and Continental have connecting service (change of planes) to Leon, which is 15 miles from Guanajuato. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $258.

TELEPHONES:

To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial the international dialing code (011), the country code (52), and the local number.

WHERE TO STAY:

Quinta Las Acacias, Paseo de la Presa; 473-731-1517, www.quintalasacacias.com.mx. Built more than 100 years ago for a wealthy family, it was restored several years ago with a 19th century European ambience. Three new rooms have a Mexican flavor, as well as Jacuzzis. Doubles start at $180, breakfast included.

Casa Estrella de Valenciana, 10 Callejon Jalisco; 473-732-1784 or, toll-free in the U.S., (866) 983-8844 or (562) 430-0647; www.mexicaninns.com. The view from this quaint, 2-year-old mountaintop inn is breathtaking. One room is also disability friendly. Each room is decorated from tiles to tapestries in a different Mexican decor. A car is needed to get to the city, though taxis are available. Doubles start at $150, breakfast included.

Hotel Posada Santa Fe, Jardin de la Union; 473-732-0084; www.posadasantafe.com. Walk into the lobby and you are transported to Mexico at the middle of the 19th century. The building has not changed much since its construction in 1862, though the rooms have been modernized. A good place to anchor and have a drink or meal at night, listening to the strolling musicians. Doubles start at $80, breakfast included.

WHERE TO EAT:

Truco 7, named after its location on a narrow street near the Jardin, is a small, artsy place that’s reasonable and known for its typical Mexican offerings.

Casa del Conde de la Valenciana, 11 Plaza de Valenciana, is on a hill facing Guanajuato and is a short taxi ride from the city. The home of the former count of La Valenciana, its upscale offerings -- Mexican and international -- are excellent.

Casa de los Agaves, 91 Paseo del la Presa, is a comfortable neighborhood place with sidewalk seating and innovative dishes.

TO LEARN MORE:

Mexico Tourism Board, (800) 446-3942 for brochures or (310) 282-9112; www.visitmexico.com.

-- Stephen Franklin