Editorials
San Miguel de Allende Keeps Winning "World's Best City" Polls and Still Isn't on Most Mexico Itineraries
San Miguel de Allende, a UNESCO-listed colonial town in Mexico's central highlands built into an art colony by mid-century expatriates, has spent over a decade topping international best-city surveys without becoming a standard stop on most first-time Mexico itineraries.
Sep 25, 2026 · BigTravel.in
Mexican travel itineraries tend to sort into two categories: the beach resorts of the Riviera Maya and Los Cabos, or the urban sprawl of Mexico City and Guadalajara. San Miguel de Allende, a highland colonial town in Guanajuato state some three hours' drive from either the capital or León, fits neither category and gets skipped by travellers defaulting to one or the other. That's despite the town holding UNESCO World Heritage status since 2008 and having spent over a decade as the top-ranked destination in Travel + Leisure's reader survey, recognition that hasn't translated into it becoming a standard itinerary stop for first-time visitors to Mexico.
A church built by a self-taught mason
The town's visual signature, the pink stone Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel with its soaring Gothic Revival towers, was largely rebuilt in the late 19th century by Zeferino Gutiérrez, a local mason working from postcards of European cathedrals rather than formal architectural training. The result is a landmark that reads as authentically colonial to most visitors despite being a relatively late, self-taught reinterpretation, which is arguably the most San Miguel thing about it: a town that has always absorbed outside influence on its own terms.
Why an art colony grew here
San Miguel's modern character owes much to the Instituto Allende and the Escuela de Bellas Artes, art schools that drew American and European students and expatriates from the 1930s onward, some of them GI Bill veterans studying art after the Second World War. That influx established the town as a genuine expatriate art colony decades before it became a retirement or lifestyle destination, and the creative infrastructure, galleries, workshops, a long-running writers' conference, has persisted since.
The cost of being discovered
None of this has gone unnoticed: San Miguel now has one of Mexico's largest concentrations of American and Canadian expatriate residents, and rising property prices in the historic centre are a frequent local complaint. It's a genuine tension, not a footnote, and worth knowing before arriving expecting an undiscovered secret. What San Miguel still offers, even so, is a colonial town that functions as a real Mexican community first, with tourism layered on rather than built as the whole point.
Traveller tips
- The nearest airport is León/Bajío (BJX), about 1.5 hours away; Querétaro airport is a similar distance.
- The historic centre's strict building preservation code, in place since 1982, means no visible modern signage or construction on the main facades.
- Altitude here is around 1,900 metres, enough that some visitors notice mild effects in the first day or two.
- The Tuesday market (Tianguis del Martes) is a better gauge of everyday San Miguel than the more tourist-oriented shops around the Jardín.
Where this is
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico