Tlaxcala is the smallest state in Mexico and the one with the most awkward place in the national story: the Tlaxcalteca had held out against the Aztecs for a century, and in 1519 they allied with Cortés. Without them the conquest would have gone differently, and Mexican history has never quite forgiven them.
Tlaxcala de Xicohténcatl is among the smallest state capitals, with an ochre-and-red main square, a sixteenth-century Franciscan monastery whose wooden ceiling is Moorish, and a vast mural in the government palace telling the state's version of events.
Cacaxtla, nearby, has the best-preserved pre-Hispanic murals in Mexico — battle scenes in blue and red pigment, painted around 700 AD and only discovered in 1975.
Tlaxco is haciendas and fighting-bull ranches; the state breeds much of Mexico's bull stock, and its charreada tradition runs deep. Calpulalpan sits on the old road to Mexico City.
The state's carnival, with its huehues in carved wooden masks of pink-faced Spaniards, is among the most distinctive in the country.
