León de Los Aldama
— — a cathedral pink in the late afternoon.
Not only on a wall.
“The largest city in Guanajuato, on the Bajío plain north of Mexico City, known for leather and shoes since the nineteenth century. The Cathedral Basilica rises in pink cantera stone over the central square, and the Arco de la Calzada frames the long boulevard toward it. From the studio the place reads as honest working light, the kind that holds onto a wall after sundown.
León de Los Aldama, 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.
León de los Aldama sits on the Bajío plain in central Mexico, about 380 kilometres northwest of Mexico City and 60 kilometres west of the state capital, Guanajuato. The metropolitan population is roughly 1.7 million, the largest in the state and the centre of Mexico's leather and footwear industry. Founded in 1576 as Villa de León by the viceroy Martín Enríquez de Almanza, it grew along the Río de los Gómez and was raised to city status in 1830. The Arco de la Calzada, rebuilt in 1893, anchors the historic centre's western approach.
The Cathedral Basilica of Our Mother of Light holds the Plaza de los Mártires del 2 de Enero, its facade carved in pink cantera stone over the long building campaign from 1746 to 1866. The Jesuit order began the work; after their expulsion from New Spain in 1767, construction passed through diocesan hands and was finished under Bishop José María de Jesús Diez de Sollano. Pope Pius IX granted basilica status in 1864. The neoclassical interior runs to three naves with carved columns of the same local stone.
The historic centre walks easily on foot from the Arco de la Calzada along the broad pedestrian Calzada de los Héroes to the cathedral, about a kilometre east. The Plaza Principal, the Forum Cultural Guanajuato to the south, and the Templo Expiatorio with its Gothic-Revival facade are within twenty minutes' walk. León's leather market on Belisario Domínguez near the bus station runs daily; the city also hosts the Feria de León each January with a livestock fair, concerts, and the SAPICA leather trade fair twice a year.