Querétaro (city)
Santiago de Querétaro (Spanish pronunciation: [sanˈtjaɣo ðe keˈɾetaɾo]; Otomi: Dähnini Maxei), most commonly known as Querétaro, is the capital and largest city of the state of Querétaro, located in central Mexico. It is part of the macroregion of Bajío.[4] It is 213 kilometers (132 mi) northwest of Mexico City, 63 kilometers (39 mi) southeast of San Miguel de Allende and 200 kilometers (120 mi) south of San Luis Potosí.[5] It is also the seat of the municipality of Querétaro, divided into seven boroughs. In 1996, the historic center of Querétaro was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Santiago de Querétaro
25 July 1531
1917
Luis Nava
1,820 m (5,970 ft)
1,594,212
794,789
1,049,777
2023
$38.5 billion[2]
$27,200
442/446
Historic Monuments Zone of Querétaro
Cultural
ii, iv
1996
The city is a strong business and economic center[4][6][7] and a vigorous service center that is experiencing an ongoing social and economic revitalization. All this has resulted in high levels of migration from other parts of Mexico.[8][9]
Querétaro has seen outstanding industrial and economic development since the mid-1990s. The Querétaro metropolitan area has the second highest per capita GDP among Mexico's metropolitan areas with US$20,000 after Monterrey. The city is the fastest-growing in the country, basing its economy on IT and data centers, logistics services, aircraft manufacturing and maintenance, call centers, the automotive and machinery industries, and the production of chemicals and food products. The region of Querétaro has a rapidly growing vineyards agriculture and hosts the famous wine producer from Spain Freixenet. Wine production in the state of Querétaro is now the second largest in Mexico after that of the Baja California region.
Major international corporations in the aerospace, electronics, automotive, chemical, food, and financial areas have their national headquarters in Querétaro.
Etymology[edit]
In the Otomi language, it is referred to as "Maxei" or "Ndamaxei", which means ball game and the grand ball game respectively. In the Mendocino Codex the town is called Tlaschco or Tlaxco, from the Nahuatl word for ball game. However, Querétaro most likely comes from k'eri ireta rho, meaning place of the great people, especially since during Aztec times about 15,000 people lived here. Querétaro has an Aztec glyph to represent it as it was a tributary province. In 1655, it received a coat of arms from the Spanish Crown.[8]
The word Querétaro was voted by 33,000 participants as "the most beautiful word in the Spanish language", before being approved by the Instituto Cervantes.[10][11] In Pre-Columbian terminology, Querétaro literally means "the island of the blue salamanders."[12] Nevertheless, other scholars suggest that it can mean "place of the reptiles" or "place of the giant rocks."[13]
ITESM (Tec de Monterrey), Querétaro campus.
The city and its surroundings are home to some of the most important universities in Mexico. The most prestigious universities in Mexico, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the Universidad Anáhuac and the ITESM (Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey), have set campuses at the outskirts where significant research is carried out. UNAM is a public institution and the Universidad Anáhuac and the ITESM-Querétaro are private.
The city is also home to more than seven research centers. Among the most important are CIATEQ, CIDESI and CIDETEQ. There are also several private research centers.
The city has one of the most modern stadiums in Mexico, the Estadio Corregidora, built for the FIFA World Cup held in 1986. Querétaro F.C. of the Liga MX plays there.
One of the most popular sports in the city is bullfighting. There are two bullrings, Santa María, and Juriquilla. Santa María was inaugurated on December 22, 1963, and it has a capacity for 13,000 spectators. Juriquilla is much smaller but considered the most beautiful bullring in the country.
Another popular sport is American Football which is played in different institutions (UAQ [Gatos Salvajes], ITQ [Zorros] & ITESM [Borregos Salvajes]), Querétaro has two college football teams, the Zorros of ITQ (ONEFA) and Borregos Salvajes ITESM campus Querétaro (CONADEIP).
Golf is also quite popular, with numerous courses including: Juriquilla, Campestre, Balvanera, and El Campanario. San Gil and Tequisquiapan are located near the city itself.
There are two wrestling or Lucha Libre Arenas in the city, the Arena Querétaro that has matches from the Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre, the Desastre Total Ultraviolento, and the Auditorio Arteaga a multipurpose venue that hosts Libertadores de Querétaro basketball and AAA fights.
The Auditorio Arteaga also serves as Basketball stadium for the city team Libertadores and for traditional wrestling, volleyball and other sports. This venue has a capacity of 3000 people seated.
The Auditorio Josefa Ortiz is the largest multipurpose venue in the city, it serve for tennis matches (Davis Cup), Tae Kwon Do, Table Tennis, and other sports, it has a capacity of 6000 seated in stadium formation.
Other sport facilities in the city include:
UNESCO World Heritage Site[edit]
In 1996, the historic center of Querétaro was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.[15] According to UNESCO's website, the "old colonial town of Querétaro is unusual in having retained the geometric street plan of the Spanish conquerors side by side with the twisting alleys of the Otomi quarters. The Otomi, the Tarasco, the Chichimeca and the Spanish lived together peacefully in the town with similar standards of living, a rare occurrence at a time when the Indigenous and Hispanic were usually separated by a large income gap and at odds with one another in other parts of the nation.
This peace and similarity of social integration is largely attributed to the fact that the local Indigenous ethnicities and Spanish reached peace early after contact and both functioned concurrently with the Indigenous retaining their own economic and social systems while the Criollos operated in a separate but integrated society within the city. The city is notable for the many ornate civil and religious Baroque monuments from its golden age in the 17th and 18th centuries"[44] In 2008, National Geographic Traveler listed Querétaro as one of the top 15 historic destinations of the world.[45]
A street in the historic district of Querétaro
Aqueduct.
Casa de la Corregidora.
San Francisco church.
Historic center.
Santa Rosa de Viterbo.
Querétaro travel guide from Wikivoyage