Oaxaca (pronounced wa-HA-ka) is one of the most atmospheric cities in Mexico — a highland capital where colonial architecture, Indigenous culture and culinary innovation blend into one of the country’s most distinctive urban experiences. Set in a wide valley surrounded by agave-covered hills, it is a place to linger: to explore its food, churches, archaeological sites, and deeply rooted Zapotec traditions.

Tourism here is well developed but retains an independent, intergenerational feel, with travellers from North America and Europe mixing with local visitors and seasonal residents. Unlike the tourist crowds of Cancún or Puerto Vallarta, Oaxaca draws people looking for substance — a cultural capital that wears both its heritage and its modernity proudly.

Oaxaca City: Living History and Layers of Identity

We stayed at Parador San Agustín, a lovely colonial building with internal courtyards, just a few blocks from the zócalo. The centre is walkable and full of colour — from cobbled streets and markets to elegant courtyards and colonial façades.

Tasting Menu at El Destilada; Parador San Agustín; Mercado Benito Juárez; Zócolo; Necklass at Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca; Jardín Etnobotánico; Oaxaca

At the heart of Oaxaca lies its bustling zócalo, a leafy central square framed by elegant colonnades on two sides. These arcades house long-standing cafés, bars, and restaurants, perfect for people-watching over a cold beer or hot chocolate. Musicians, protestors, and families all converge here, the central flagpole, often flying the Mexican tricolour, acts as a symbolic and physical meeting point. On one side rises the Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, while the opposite flank is home to the Palacio de Gobierno, with the other sides dotted with shops, arcades, and official buildings. The space is always alive — shaded by mature trees and animated by buskers, balloon sellers, and political placards tied to tree trunks, reminding visitors that this beautiful city is also a place of conscience and history.

Just a few blocks from the zócalo, the Mercado Benito Juárez is Oaxaca’s principal covered market and an essential part of city life. The air is thick with the aromas of mole pastes, spices, local cheeses, chocolate, and chillies. Vendors stand behind pyramids of produce, shouting out prices or offering tasters of chapulines (toasted grasshoppers) — a regional delicacy. You’ll find woven baskets, traditional textiles, hand-embroidered blouses, and everything from mezcal to marzipan. Unlike the more curated artisan markets, this is still a working market, used as much by locals as by tourists.

Oaxaca Churches and Museums

Facing the zócalo, this 18th-century cathedral, Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, was built using green cantera stone, a hallmark of Oaxacan architecture. The façade is understated compared to other Mexican cathedrals, but inside you’ll find gilded altars, marble columns, and painted ceilings. While impressive, it’s more a symbol of civic pride than a spiritual showpiece — that role belongs to Santo Domingo.

Arguably the most dazzling church in Oaxaca, Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán is an ornate baroque masterpiece, richly decorated with gold leaf, painted ceiling panels, and sculpted chapels. The entry alone, under a ribbed barrel vault, sets the tone for the lavish interiors. The church sits slightly uphill from the zócalo, flanked by wide pedestrianised streets and filled with light that catches the gilded niches. It once formed part of a large Dominican monastery, which is now home to one of Mexico’s best museums.

Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán; Mezcal Store in Mercado Benito Juárez; Green Skull Mask from Monte Alban; Inglesia de Sangre Cristo; Poinsettias in Zócolo; Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán; Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción; Oaxaca

Set within the cloisters of the former monastery beside Santo Domingo, the world-class museum, Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, which offers an extensive journey through the region’s cultures. It’s most famous for the treasure hoard recovered from Tomb VII at Monte Albán, an astonishing collection of gold jewellery, turquoise mosaics, ceremonial masks, and grave goods. The museum also houses artefacts from Zapotec and Mixtec civilisations, colonial documents, religious art, and artefacts from independence-era Oaxaca. The building itself, with its arched walkways and courtyard views, is part of the experience.

Tucked in a quieter square to the north of the city centre, the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad honours the patron saint of Oaxaca. Built in the 17th century, it features a broad stone staircase, a beautifully proportioned baroque façade, and an interior filled with silver and gold altars. It’s especially striking at dusk, when the plaza is illuminated and relatively quiet, offering a more peaceful form of reflection compared to the hustle of the zócalo.

Immediately behind Santo Domingo, the Jardín Etnobotánico is a botanical garden with a difference, curated to reflect the interconnection between people and plants in Oaxaca. The guided-only tours (offered in both Spanish and English) walk you through cacti forests, medicinal plants, and rare local flora, including agaves used in mezcal production. You’ll learn how these plants shaped Zapotec and Mixtec culture, and how Oaxaca’s diverse ecosystems underpin its resilience. With its stark walls, gravel walkways, and carefully arranged flora, the garden is both modernist and timeless.

Oaxaca’s Culinary Scene: Mole, Mezcal and More

Oaxaca is known as the land of the seven moles, rich, complex sauces that represent regional identity and ancestral culinary knowledge. While every cook has a personal touch, here are the seven classic varieties:

1. Mole Negro: The darkest and most famous mole, made with burnt chillies, plantain, nuts, chocolate, and up to 30 ingredients — complex, smoky, and often served with turkey or chicken.
2. Mole Coloradito: A red mole that balances heat and sweetness, often made with ancho chillies, tomatoes, spices, and a hint of chocolate — lighter than mole negro but still layered.
3. Mole Rojo: A bold, spicy mole made with guajillo and pasilla chillies, garlic, onions, and pepitas (pumpkin seeds) — often served at festive occasions.
4. Mole Amarillo: A yellow mole with a base of chillies and masa (corn dough), giving it a grainy, creamy texture — it’s commonly used with vegetables and chicken.
5. Mole Verde: A fresh green mole made from herbs, pumpkin seeds, and green chillies — often served with pork or tamales.
6. Mole Chichilo: A lesser-known mole, slightly bitter and earthy, made with burnt tortilla, beef stock, and pasilla chillies — often used for beef stews.
7. Manchamantel: Literally “tablecloth-stainer”, this is a fruit-based mole, blending pineapple, plantain, ancho chillies — often paired with pork.

Each mole is not just a sauce, but a story — tied to specific festivals, rituals, and regional lineages. Tasting them is like reading a regional family history through food.

Oaxaca’s restaurant scene is legendary. Our five main evening meals were among the best of the entire trip, inventive, beautifully presented, and rooted in local ingredients. Among the restaurants we tried were:

• Restaurante Origen: refined Oaxacan cuisine inspired by Chef and Owner Rosa Martinez’s childhood in Oaxaca, with seasonal menus.
• El Destilado: modern Mexican restaurant with mezcal tastings and experimental plates.
• Casa Taviche: small restaurant specialising in Oaxacan cuisine with a menu changing on a daily basis.
• Tr3s 3istro: elegant, modern Oaxacan / Mexican sitting on the second floor with balconies overlooking the main zócalo, all served with a good mezcal.
• Café Bistrot Epicuro: fusion of Italian and Mexican cuisine in an old colonial building with elegant setting.

Oaxaca, with its food culture, offers visitors an ideal opportunity to attend cookery classes, which include how to make the many different moles, shopping for traditional ingredients in the markets and then the opportunity to enjoy your work. There are also a number of language schools, Mexican Spanish is generally quite clear and not heavily accented like the Spanish further south in places like Chile and Argentina and can make an ideal companion to language classes.

Mezcal vs Tequila
While both spirits come from agave, tequila must use only blue agave and is produced in specific regions. Mezcal, however, can be made from many varieties, often using artisanal methods. The smoky flavour comes from roasting the agave hearts in underground pits. Oaxaca is mezcal’s heartland, and the surrounding hills are dotted with wild and cultivated agave.

Monte Albán: Zapotec Power on a Hilltop

A few kilometres west of the Oaxaca lies Monte Albán, one of Mexico’s most important pre-Hispanic archaeological sites. Perched atop an artificially levelled mountain ridge overlooking the Oaxaca Valley, it was the ceremonial heart of the Zapotec civilisation for over a thousand years. The site’s elevated position gives it sweeping views in all directions, a strategic vantage point that reflects both its military and religious importance.

Who were the Zapotecs?
The Zapotec civilisation emerged independently in southern Mexico, contemporaneous with Teotihuacán and the Classic Maya. Monte Albán was their capital and spiritual centre. Though later eclipsed by the Mixtecs and Aztecs, Zapotec culture endures in language, festivals, and especially weaving traditions.

At its peak during the Classic Period (roughly 250–800 AD), Monte Albán was a densely populated city with an estimated 25,000 inhabitants. The monumental core is vast, consisting of a central plaza over 300 metres long and 200 metres wide, surrounded by temples, stepped pyramids, tombs, and palaces. Although only a portion has been restored, the scale of the ceremonial space and its sense of spatial harmony are still evident — this was a city built to impress both mortals and gods.

One of the more evocative features is the Edificio de los Danzantes, or “Building of the Dancers.” The name is misleading, while the carved stone reliefs once appeared to depict dancers, scholars now interpret them as representations of sacrificial victims or political captives, possibly even conquered leaders. Their twisted postures and mutilated features support this theory, casting a darker shadow over the site’s ceremonial grandeur. These carvings are among the earliest known examples of Zapotec script and glyphs, making Monte Albán also one of Mesoamerica’s first literate cities.

Scattered throughout the site are further stelae, hieroglyphic inscriptions, and bas-reliefs illustrating calendar dates, elite rituals, and episodes of warfare. Some structures, like Platform J, an arrow-shaped observatory, appear aligned with celestial bodies and may have been used for astronomical tracking, linking the Zapotec worldview with cosmic cycles.

Views of Monte Albán including Edificio de los Danzantes

Perhaps the most astonishing discovery was Tumba VII (Tomb Seven), unearthed by Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Caso in 1932. Though the tomb itself dates to the Postclassic Mixtec period, it was built within the earlier Zapotec structure and had remained untouched for centuries. Inside were hundreds of burial offerings: gold jewellery, turquoise mosaics, fine pottery, carved bone objects, and a remarkable number of funerary masks, including one mosaic skull adorned with turquoise and shell. Many of these artefacts are now on display at the Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, located in the former Dominican monastery adjoining the Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán in the city centre. The museum’s Monte Albán gallery provides critical insight into the city’s evolution, artistic sophistication, and enduring influence in the region.

Despite the grandeur, Monte Albán was largely abandoned by 900 AD. The reasons for its decline are still debated, but it coincides with the wider collapse of Classic Period civilisations across Mesoamerica, including Teotihuacán and many Maya city-states. Unlike later sites like Cholula, Monte Albán remained untouched by Spanish conquest, there are no colonial churches or overlays here, only the stone bones of a once-mighty city standing against the Oaxacan skyline.

Why Monte Albán Deserves More Attention
While Palenque and Chichén Itzá draw the crowds, Monte Albán often flies under the radar, despite being one of the oldest and most important planned cities in Mesoamerica. With sweeping valley views, extensive Zapotec glyphs, and the spectacular treasures of Tomb VII, it offers serious reward for the visitor willing to look beyond the headline sites.

Zapotec Textiles
Villages around Oaxaca, particularly Teotitlán del Valle, are known for their vibrant handwoven rugs and garments. These often feature zigzag and diamond motifs, rooted in cosmology and ancestral stories, and use natural dyes made from plants and insects.

Puerto Escondido: From Mountains to Pacific Surf

Our final stop in Oaxaca State was Puerto Escondido, a Pacific surf town accessible only via a long and winding 12-hour bus ride down from the highlands. As the crow flies it should be a simple 200km or so straight down to the coast, however the road is poor, so the bus went almost as far South before going to the coast and then going back North on the coast road. Despite its distance, the journey is worthwhile.

Puerto Escondido offers broad beaches, laid-back cafés and consistent waves, making it a favourite among surfers and relaxed travellers alike. In January, it was calm but still lively, and a good place to unwind after the intensity of Oaxaca City. Unlike Mexican coastal resorts around Cancún and elsewhere, it has not been overwhelmed by mass tourism and large hotels.

We stayed at La Sirena, a small seafront guesthouse with ocean views — perfect for sunsets and morning coffee.

Surfers and Beach, Puerto Escondido

From Puerto Escondido we took the overnight ADO bus to San Cristóbal de las Casas.

Dates Visited 23^rd to 31^st January 2023