Plaza Borda Silver Workshops

Plaza Borda, the cobblestone main square of Taxco de Alarcón, is the heart of a silver district that fans out along the narrow streets surrounding the Baroque Santa Prisca parish. Taxco's identity as Mexico's silver capital dates to the 1930s, when American designer William Spratling opened a workshop that trained local craftspeople and revived a trade rooted in the colonial-era silver mines nearby; that legacy is still visible in the hundreds of small workshops and boutiques operating today, ranging from single-room family ateliers to multi-generation design houses with recognizable house styles. Goods here lean toward finished jewelry and decorative silverware -- rings, necklaces, flatware, and larger sculptural pieces -- with a noticeably higher proportion of designer and workshop-branded work than the tourist-trinket volume sold near the beach markets of Acapulco. Because so many independent shops compete within a few blocks, quality and pricing vary considerably: some boutiques sell only in-house designs at fixed prices, while others display work from multiple smaller producers and are more open to negotiation. Many workshops keep their workbenches visible or open to the street, letting visitors watch a piece being soldered, polished, or stone-set, which is one of the district's distinguishing features compared to a typical retail market. Cash is widely used and often preferred for the best pricing, though the larger boutiques near the plaza generally accept cards; formal tax-refund processing is not standard at small workshops. The plaza itself stays lively with cafés and a handful of casual food stalls under the laurel trees, making it easy to combine browsing with a coffee break between shops. The must-visit corners are the streets directly behind Santa Prisca, where the oldest workshops cluster, and the arcades along the plaza's north side, where several long-established design houses are based.