Founded in the 1500s. Reborn in the 1940s as a haven for artists from the north. Today, one of the most vibrant, active communities in the world.
The first time I came to San Miguel was 30 years ago. When I returned three decades later, the magic hit me hard all over again.
The light on the buildings. The glistening cobblestones. Church spires and mountain views everywhere I looked.
But it wasn't until I started getting invited to dinners in people's homes, dancing with new friends, and having conversations that lasted for hours that I realized the beauty wasn't what had captured me.
It was the people.
What surprised me most is how little age defines your life here. My friends in their seventies are dating, going out, hosting dinners, making new friends, starting new things. People in their eighties still host, and people in their twenties show up.
I've had dinner with a Mexican artist in her twenties seated beside a man in his eighties who showed in Manhattan galleries for forty years, and she was the one who wanted him there.
I'm 55 and I've never had a social life with friends of so many ages.
I don't want to live somewhere everyone is my age. I want to live where people of every age are seen and included. That's San Miguel.
After the Second World War, veterans from the United States discovered they could use the GI Bill to study art and Spanish at the Instituto Allende.
So the people who came weren't tourists or executives. They were painters, musicians, dancers, poets, philosophers. The ones who wanted to make something and needed a magical place to do it.
That's still the DNA of this place.
There is nowhere else in Mexico quite like it. In a lot of towns, foreigners live alongside the local community. Here they've been intertwined for three generations. In a town of 174,000, there are more than 100 nonprofits, most started by newcomers working alongside Mexican neighbors. This town depends on them, embraces them, and celebrates them.
You are not the first foreigner to arrive. You're the latest in a very long line, and there's a place already made for you.
The one where you finally paint. Or write the book. Learn to tango. Or learn to throw a pot, at 64, badly, with people who don't care.
It's happening right now, every day, in studios all over this town.
The San Miguel Writers' Conference. The Guanajuato International Film Festival. Jazz festivals. Three operas in a town this size. Hoping to start a ballet soon.
Warm and sunny nearly every day. Cool at night. Two months of rain a year, and even then it usually rains for about an hour in the afternoon before clearing up.
You'll want a sweater in the evening. That's about the extent of the problem.
There's no real translation. It's the pace of the place.
Nobody is hurrying. Meals take longer. Conversations don't get cut short because someone has to be somewhere.
You'll find it frustrating for about three weeks. Then one day you'll notice your shoulders have come down, and you won't want to go back.
You keep running into people. You meet someone at dinner on Tuesday and see them at the market on Saturday. You have coffee once, then you're at the same lecture, and then they introduce you to somebody else.
That's how friendships grow here.
But a small town doesn't hand you a community. Someone has to bring you in, and that can take a while.
I was lucky. People opened doors for me, and now it feels I know almost everyone.
Now I open those doors for the people I work with.
A new generation of chefs reimagining classic Mexican cooking with produce from farms 20 minutes away. Italian. Japanese. French. Argentine. A serious vegan scene. Street tacos that will ruin you for tacos anywhere else.
Wine country is close, and visiting the vineyards is an experience with incredible dining.
You're a long way from the beach. Almost nobody here misses it.
Natural thermal hot springs, 10 to 15 minutes away, surrounded by beautiful gardens. People go every week. The water is genuinely healing, and the afternoon that follows is genuinely lost.
The El Charco del Ingenio botanical garden is massive. Ancient aqueduct ruins along the hiking trails. Pyramids only an hour away. Guanajuato, another UNESCO World Heritage city, is only 90 minutes. There are a lot of other amazing day trips to experience the history and natural wonders of Mexico.
Pickleball courts packed every morning. Golf courses just outside town. Walking groups discovering a new mural every week. Tennis, swimming, horseback riding, hiking. A personal trainer for a fraction of what you'd pay back home.
Live music is everywhere. One of my favorite things is that most shows start around 6pm and end by 9 or 10. You can hear a wonderful band, have a proper night out, and still be home in bed by 10:30.
I'm 55, and I've never lived anywhere else quite like that. There are late-night places if you want them. Most of us don't.
One afternoon at Hotel Matilda, a flash mob of opera singers appeared from every corner of the courtyard. Angelic voices rising into the sky.
That's just a Tuesday here.
You don't strictly need it. There are people who've lived here happily for 20 years without learning a word, and I find that a little embarrassing to admit.
But if you want Mexican friends, not just an expat circle, you'll want the language. This town is set up for it. Excellent schools, private tutors, and conversation groups where nobody minds that you're terrible at first. Everybody is.
6,200 feet is real. Most people feel it for the first few days.
And then there's a choice. You can simply enjoy this town as it is. Plenty of people do. Or you can contribute something and leave it a little better than you found it. In my experience, the happiest people choose the second.
Ahead of Kyoto, Tokyo, Florence, and Paris.
A place where creativity thrives, strangers become friends, and every sunset feels like a benediction.
I've written about all of it in my blog, including the parts nobody mentions.
Read the Stories →That's my philosophy, and the reason Casa Avra exists.
San Miguel is too magical to experience alone.
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