San Cristóbal de Las Casas
— — red tile roofs under a pine-cool sky.
Not only on a wall.
“A colonial town at about 2,200 metres in the central highlands of Chiapas, founded by the Spanish in 1528 in a valley already long held by Tzotzil and Tzeltal Maya communities. Low whitewashed houses with red tile roofs, two pedestrian streets crossing at the cathedral, market stalls of black pottery and amber. Mornings carry woodsmoke from the surrounding villages. It is named for the Dominican bishop Bartolomé de las Casas, who defended the Maya here in the 1540s.
San Cristóbal de Las Casas, 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.
San Cristóbal de Las Casas sits in the Jovel Valley of the central Chiapas highlands at about 2,200 metres above sea level. Founded as Villa Real de Chiapa by the Spanish captain Diego de Mazariegos on 31 March 1528, the town served as the colonial capital of Chiapas until 1892, when the seat moved to Tuxtla Gutiérrez. The current name honours Bartolomé de las Casas, the Dominican bishop appointed to Chiapas in 1545 who advocated for the rights of indigenous communities. The municipal population is around 215,000, with surrounding Tzotzil and Tzeltal Maya villages adding many more in the daily market.
The historic centre is laid out on a Spanish grid around the Plaza 31 de Marzo, with the yellow-and-red Catedral de San Cristóbal built between 1528 and the 18th century on the north side. Two pedestrian streets, Real de Guadalupe and 20 de Noviembre, run east and north from the plaza to the hilltop churches of Guadalupe and San Cristóbalito. The Templo de Santo Domingo, finished in 1560 and rebuilt through the 17th century, carries one of the most elaborate baroque facades in southern Mexico and shelters a daily textile and amber market on its forecourt.
The altitude keeps the town cool through the year. January mornings drop to about 4°C and July afternoons rarely pass 22°C; rain falls mostly between June and October. The air carries pine and woodsmoke from the surrounding ridges, where Tzotzil families burn ocote in open kitchens. Mist sits in the valley until mid-morning most days from December through February. The town belongs to Mexico's Pueblos Mágicos programme, named in 2003, and a 2010 federal designation protected the colonial centre as a Zona de Monumentos Históricos covering 145 hectares.