Cerro de San Pedro

Cerro de San Pedro is the mining village that gave San Luis Potosí its name and its colonial-era silver fortune, sitting on a hillside roughly 5 to 10 kilometers northeast of the city. Prospectors struck gold and silver here in 1592, and mining continued intermittently until 1950, yielding nearly 3 million ounces of gold and 40 million ounces of silver over more than three centuries. Visitors today walk half-abandoned streets of weathered adobe and stone buildings, many roofless or partially collapsed, past a colonial parish church that still holds occasional services, and can look out over open-pit mine workings on the surrounding hills. A visit takes 2 to 3 hours, enough time to walk the main street, visit the church and take in views from the hillside above the village. The best photographs come from the elevated approach road, which frames the whole settlement against the open-pit mining landscape beyond, and from the church atrium looking back down the main street. Weekend mornings bring small food stalls and an open church, giving the village more life than the near-total quiet of a weekday visit, when many buildings are shuttered. Because the roads in are unpaved in places and the village sits at higher elevation than the city, sturdy shoes and sun protection are worth bringing regardless of season.