Plaza de la Paz

Our days run through the Plaza de la Paz, an open, radiant plaza in the center of Guanajuato. The plaza is about a 10-minute walk from our apartment, and we pass through it on our way to the main university building, to the copy shop where we continue to print and copy many official documents, and to other daily destinations.

Amidst the many tight alleys and smaller, cloistered plazas of the city, the Plaza de la Paz opens up under an expanse of blue sky. It is lined down its center with green hedges and bunches of bright red poinsettias, and it is anchored at the top by the Básilica de Nuestra Señora de Guanajuato, a beautiful Baroque church of yellow-gold walls and orange cupolas. The Básilica draws our gaze every morning as we look down on the city from our hike in the hills, and we slow down to look up at it as we pass through the plaza each afternoon. The church was built between 1671 and 1696, and it houses a wooden image of the Virgin Mary. This image, I understand, spent 800 years hidden from the Moors in a cave in Spain before traveling to the "New World" in 1557, a gift from King Philip II to the city of Guanajuato in gratitude for the bullion that was being pulled from its mines and shipped to Spain.