Guadalajara Audio Tours

Guadalajara was founded on Valentine's Day in 1542, which is either a coincidence or the beginning of a very long civic love affair with its own identity. It is the home of mariachi music, the starting point of tequila production (the town of Tequila is 60 kilometers northwest), and the city that gave Mexico the charreada -- the national rodeo tradition. Cristobal de Onate established it in the Atemajac Valley, naming it after his hometown in Castile, and it has been Mexico's second cultural capital for most of the centuries since.

The historic center around the Cathedral -- which took over 250 years to complete and was left with an intentionally mismatched pair of towers -- sits alongside the Hospicio Cabanas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site whose chapel ceiling holds Jose Clemente Orozco's enormous, uncompromising murals depicting the Spanish conquest.

The San Juan de Dios market claims to be the largest covered market in Latin America. Birria, the red-chili braised meat preparation that became a global food trend, was invented in the neighborhoods around the suburb of Tlaquepaque, where it still tastes considerably better than in every other city that has tried to reproduce it. Guadalajara knows what it started, and it is not modest about it.