Beyond the divers and the bay, Acapulco keeps a Rivera mosaic on a Las Playas wall, a star fort built on galleon silver, a thousand carved Guerrero masks and dance halls running since 1975. Three days inside the city's working art scene.
Pentagonal star fort rebuilt in 1783 after an earthquake, now an INAH museum: twelve halls tracing the Manila Galleon trade with Asia, Chinese porcelain, colonial silver and independence-era arms. Tuesday to Sunday, 09:00–18:00.
Roughly a thousand masks from Guerrero, Michoacán and beyond fill two floors beside the fort: tigre, diablo and tlacololero faces in carved wood, leather and papier-mâché, most of them still danced in village fiestas.
Dolores Olmedo's house on Calle Inalámbrica, where Diego Rivera spent his last eighteen months covering the outer wall in a mosaic of shell, mirror and tile: Quetzalcóatl coiled around Tláloc and a serpent-headed night sky.
A 42-metre concrete cross on the Las Brisas ridge, raised by the Trouyet family in 1970, with an open-sided ecumenical chapel, the Favier sculpture garden and a reading of the entire bay from 380 metres up.
Guerrero's only archaeological zone inside a city: eighteen granite boulders carved with about two hundred petroglyphs by Yope people between 800 BCE and 400 CE, reached by a 1.2 km stone path up Cerro El Veladero.
The Costera's cultural centre keeps rotating painting and photography shows in its Sala de Exposiciones, a small room of Mezcala stone figures, and free evening workshops in guitar, danzón and folkloric dance for locals.
The 1973 convention complex holds a 1,200-seat theatre used by the Orquesta Filarmónica de Acapulco and the long-running Fiesta Mexicana folkloric evening; the month's programme is posted at the fountain-court box office.
Acapulco's self-declared cathedral of salsa has run since 1975: live orquesta from around 21:00, danzón couples working the early set, and a floor that mixes regulars in their seventies with weekenders from Mexico City.
The city's main market sprawls over blocks off Avenida Constituyentes: hibiscus and tamarind by the kilo, dried jumiles, counters serving Guerrero-style pozole verde, and an aisle of copal, veladoras and curandero herbs.
Around two hundred stalls two blocks behind the old town: Olinalá lacquered boxes scented with linaloe wood, Taxco silver, amate bark paintings from Xalitla, and Guerrero masks sold beside the tourist reproductions.
A one-street fishing and coconut settlement 12 km northwest, where palapa kitchens grill pescado a la talla over coals, families still press coconut oil by hand, and the naval aviation school sets the rhythm of the day.
The freshwater lagoon behind the sandbar, mangrove-fringed and scattered with islands — Montosa, Pájaros — where lancheros run late-afternoon trips past herons and drop you at the palapa kitchens of Barra de Coyuca.