Main Plaza - Where the Town Gathers

Photo: panza.rayada, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)

A stop on Todos Santos: Pueblo Magico Walk, a free self-guided tour.

You are standing in the plaza that has anchored Todos Santos since its mission days. Palms line the square, a round kiosk sits near its center, the mission church closes off the south side and the old theater faces you from the west. On a winter afternoon you will find families on the benches, kids on bikes and the occasional band setting up for a fiesta.

The town sits in a small oasis in the desert, fed by a spring that once watered orchards and cane fields running toward the sea. That water is the reason anyone settled here at all. When it failed in 1950, many families left, and the town spent decades as a quiet farming village.

The paving of Highway 19 in the mid-1980s brought visitors, then painters, photographers and writers who stayed. Take a slow lap of the plaza and look at the low, thick-walled buildings around it before you head northeast to the cultural center.

Getting here: This is where the tour begins: the main plaza in the center of town, just north of the mission church.

Did you know?: Mexico added Todos Santos to its Pueblos Magicos program in 2006, recognizing the town for its history, culture and natural setting.

Photo op: Stand at the north end of the plaza and frame the kiosk with the mission church rising behind it.

More on Wikipedia: Todos Santos, Baja California Sur · Mexican Federal Highway 19

Main Plaza - Where the Town Gathers

Stops on this tour