Sombrerete

Sombrerete is 160 kilometers northwest of Zacatecas City on a road that crosses the high plains of the northern state, and almost no one goes there. The Zacatecas tourist circuit — the UNESCO capital, Jerez, sometimes Fresnillo — does not include it. It appeared in a list of Pueblos Mágicos I was working through with more determination than is probably sensible, and I made the detour mostly out of obligation.

I am glad I did.

Five Churches

A city of 25,000 people does not need five major colonial churches. The surplus is a sign, and the sign reads: silver.

Sombrerete was founded in 1555 following a significant strike at the Cerro Pelón mine, and in the two and a half centuries that followed, the mining wealth moved through the city in the way mining wealth moves through colonial Mexican cities — it built churches. Not because the mine owners were particularly devout, though some were, but because the church was the institution through which colonial wealth was legitimized and displayed, and the scale of the building was the scale of the statement.

The five churches sit within walking distance of each other in the historic center. Three of them face onto or near the main plaza; the other two are a short walk away along stone streets. I arrived at dusk on a Wednesday, expecting perhaps one of them to be open for an evening mass. All five were open.

The interiors vary. Some are austere, the gilding stripped or faded, the retablos reduced by time to their structural elements. Others have retained enough of their baroque decoration to convey what they were intended to convey: a concentration of wealth displayed as divine magnificence. The San Juan Bautista church on the main plaza has an interior that manages to feel both intimate and imposing — the scale is not quite cathedral scale, which means you are in closer proximity to the altarpieces, and they are not diminished by distance.

I walked between all five in about an hour and a half, which was possible because the distances are short and the light lasted just long enough. At the last one — a smaller church off a side street, half in shadow — a woman was mopping the stone floor with a bucket and a rag mop, slowly, working toward the door. She looked up and nodded. I looked at the altarpiece for a few minutes and walked back out into the almost-dark.

The Baroque Facade

The Convento de San Mateo de Apostol is the reason architectural historians mention Sombrerete. The facade of the main church is a baroque composition in the Zacatecan style — dense, high-relief, the stonework carved deeply enough that it casts shadows at almost any angle of light — and it is in good enough condition to read as its makers intended it.

I have looked at a lot of colonial baroque facades in Mexico. Some of them blur after a while into a general impression of abundance and ambition. The San Mateo facade did not blur. The specific treatment of the flanking columns — the way the carved motifs transition from botanical to geometric to figurative as they rise — has an internal logic that rewards standing in front of it for a while, moving slightly left and then right, watching how the shadows shift.

In France, the comparison I keep reaching for involuntarily, a facade of this quality would be in a guidebook, roped off, lit with spotlights, with a small queue. In Sombrerete it was simply there, with no special apparatus around it, no admission charge, accessible to anyone who showed up. A family was eating dinner at a table in the convent courtyard visible through the open door. Someone had left a football against the base of the church wall.

The mine infrastructure at Cerro Pelón is visible from the hills above the city — the headframes and processing structures of a mine that produced silver from 1555 through the nineteenth century and then stopped. The city adapted. The churches stayed. The architecture is too large for the current population, and you feel that as you walk through it, in the way you feel the scale of rooms built for purposes that no longer exist.

Getting There

Sombrerete is on Federal Highway 45 between Zacatecas City and Durango. From Zacatecas City the drive takes about two hours. There is bus service from the Zacatecas terminal, though schedules are limited; a car gives considerably more flexibility for a place this far off the main tourist circuit.

Accommodation is limited to a few small hotels in the center, none of them remarkable. The city works as a full day excursion from Zacatecas City or as a stop on the route to Durango. The churches are generally open in the mornings and for a few hours in the evening. Arriving at dusk, as I did unintentionally, turned out to be the best possible time — the light on the stone facades is extraordinary, and the fact that everything is open gives you a different experience than the morning visitor’s systematic tour.