Hidalgo is the state nearest Mexico City that tourists most often skip, which is to its advantage.
Tula was the Toltec capital, and its atlantes — four-metre basalt warriors standing on a pyramid — are among the most striking figures in Mesoamerican art.
The hills around Pachuca, the capital, were silver country worked by Cornish miners from the 1820s. They brought the pasty, which survives as the paste, sold everywhere in the state and now filled with mole and beans as often as meat; they also brought football, which arrived in Mexico here. Mineral del Chico sits in a national park of rock formations above the town.
The north breaks into the Huasteca, where the Barranca de Metztitlán and the thermal rivers around Tecozautla and Ixmiquilpan have made the state a weekend destination for hot springs. Huichapan is where the first independence anniversary was celebrated, in 1812, while the war was still being fought.
Hidalgo is also pulque country — the fermented agave drink that preceded beer and is being revived.
