State of Chiapas

Located in the southeast of Mexico, Chiapas offers an infinte choices for the traveler thet searches for an authentic and unforgettable experience. Chiapas has the necessary characteristics to satisfy the tourist avid for new cultural experiences and the lover of nature. When the Spaniards step into Chiapas land leaded by Captain Diego de Mazariegos, the enchantment of these prodigious lands seducted them. Chiapa de Corzo, also known as Indian Chiapa and San Cristobal de Las Casas, Royal City of Chiapa or Spaniard Chiapa; were the first cities founded in the Chiapas Province.

Colonial Cities
There are a lot of cities and towns that are true testimony of the spanish past, this fact is due to its colonial buildings of great historic value.
San Cristobal de Las Casas, a colonial Mexican jewel, is located in a zone known as Los Altos de Chiapas in which tzeltales and tzotziles indians are settled, these indians are considered direct heirs of the Mayan culture. Due to this fact, this city of San Cristobal is an important center of cultural and commercial exchange.
Some of the important constructions are the cathedral with its baroque front structure and the ex-convent and temple of Santo Domingo de Guzman mainly. Since its foundation in 1528 until 1892 this was the capital state and actually is a rich artictic place which combines the colonial, baroque, plateresque and neoclassic styles. The great colonial image of the downtown has survived centuries because of its outnumbered historic monuments and its cultural manifestations due to the fact that the indian popultaion and the mestizos lived together besides all the foreigners from europe, who had turn San Cristobal de Las Casas in their new home, giving it a cosmopolitan touch with its placid and traditional spirit.

Archaeological Sites
The Mayan Culture left not only to Chiapas but to the human kind an invaluable cultural, scientific, artistic, historic and arquitectonic legacy; such as the cities –as today arqueological zones- of Palenque, Bonampak, Yaxchilan, Tonina, Tenam Puente, Chinkultic and Izapa to mention some of them.
Palenque, a mayan metropoli that was developed in the middle of the jungle, was a city of powerful rulers this happened during the 4th and the 8th centuries of our times. There are espectacular buildings such as the Temple of the Inscriptions (Templo de las Inscripciones) in which the archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier discovered in 1949 the Pakal's tomb and the Palace. Palenque has been decreed as national park and declared human kind patrimony by UNESCO.
Bonampak, also known as the city of the painted walls, is important because of the wall paintings of Building I were traces of men and women, musicians, dancers, warriors and fantastic beings participate in ceremonies and battles.
Yaxchilan, name that means Green Stones, is located near the Usumacinta river in the borderline with Guatemala. It is important because of the plenty inscriptions in its steles wich converts this city in one of the most important holders of historic records of the mayan culture.
In the Ocosingo valley, Tonina is important because of its architectonic construction and its importance resides in the fact of having been an estrategic military place that played an important role in the political balance of the area.
Chinkultic in Comitan, is important because the city is built on a series of calcareous hills and in the middle of three important water deposits: The Blue Cenote, and the Cahnujabab and Tepancuapan lagoons.