Aguascalientes City
— a city built over warm water and warmer light.
Not only on a wall.
“A colonial capital on the Bajío plateau, founded in 1575 along the silver road that ran from Zacatecas south to Mexico City. The name means hot waters. Thermal springs still rise beneath the old quarter, and the city is laced with tunnels nobody has fully mapped. Pink cantera stone on the cathedral, jacarandas around the Plaza de la Patria, and the rest of the year quietly waiting for San Marcos in April.
Aguascalientes City, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Aguascalientes is the capital of the Mexican state of the same name, on the high Bajío plateau at about 1,880 metres elevation, roughly 500 kilometres northwest of Mexico City. Population in the metropolitan area is around 1.1 million. The city was founded in 1575 by the Spanish along the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the silver route linking the Zacatecas mines with the viceregal capital. Its name, aguas calientes or hot waters, comes from the thermal springs that rise across the valley and from the network of warm-water channels and tunnels beneath the old town.
The Feria Nacional de San Marcos runs three weeks each April and May around the Jardín de San Marcos, and is one of the largest annual fairs in Latin America. State government figures for the 2024 edition put attendance above nine million visitors. The fair pairs bullfights at the Plaza Monumental, charreadas, and palenque concerts with a daily program of free music on the Foro de las Estrellas. Outside fair weeks the Jardín returns to a quiet neighbourhood square shaded by tall ash trees.
Aguascalientes is built largely in pink and ochre cantera, the local volcanic tuff. The Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of the Assumption, finished in 1738, anchors the Plaza de la Patria; its baroque façade and bell towers were modified into the early twentieth century. The Teatro Morelos, opened in 1885, hosted the 1914 Convention of Aguascalientes that gathered Carranza, Villa, and Zapata in an attempt to settle the revolution. José Guadalupe Posada, who drew the calavera figures Diego Rivera later canonized, was born in the city in 1852.