Puebla was founded in 1531 as a Spanish city on empty ground, deliberately placed between Mexico City and the sea, and it has been a conservative, devout, well-fed place ever since.
Puebla de Zaragoza has a UNESCO centre of tiled façades — talavera, the glazed ceramic the city has made since the sixteenth century — around seventy churches, and the dish that carries its name: mole poblano, a sauce of chillies and chocolate among thirty-odd ingredients. The battle of 5 May 1862, in which a Mexican force beat the French army outside the city, is why Cinco de Mayo exists.
Cholula next door has the largest pyramid by volume in the world, which looks like a hill with a church on top because that is what the Spanish made of it.
The volcanoes Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl stand on the western border; Popocatépetl is active and smokes most days.
The Sierra Norte in the north of the state is a different country — cloud forest, Nahua and Totonac villages, and towns like Cuetzalan and Pahuatlán where the market day is still the week's event. Tehuacán in the dry south is where maize was first domesticated.
