Veracruz is where the Americas' colonial history begins: Cortés landed here in 1519 and the port has been invaded four times since. This route follows the Totonac coast, the 1635 walls, and the streets where cadets fought US Marines in 1914.
Totonac capital where Cortés struck the 1519 alliance that helped doom Tenochtitlan. Lime-plastered ring temples, the Templo Mayor and the Sistema de Murallas survive in one walkable field. Open daily 09:00–17:00, ticket booth shuts 16:30.
Totonac hilltop necropolis under the Cerro de los Metates, holding roughly 80 miniature stone tombs shaped like temples. Directly below lies Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, the first town Cortés founded on the mainland in 1519.
Roots of a giant strangler fig swallow the coral-stone walls of the so-called Casa de Cortés, more likely the 16th-century customs house of the second Veracruz settlement, occupied from 1525 until the port moved in 1599. No fences, no ticket.
Coral-block chapel begun around 1523 and claimed as the oldest surviving church on the American mainland. A single bare nave, whitewashed and cool; beside it stands the ceiba where Cortés is said to have moored before scuttling his fleet.
Set in the 1897 Escuela Naval Militar where cadet Virgilio Uribe was killed resisting the US Marine landing of 21 April 1914. The façade still carries shell damage; galleries cover the occupation, the Gulf fleet and the port's defences.
The 1902 terminal of the Ferrocarril Mexicano, the Mexico City line that turned Veracruz into the republic's cargo gate. Porfirian ironwork, a tiled waiting hall and the platforms where the 1914 munitions cargo was landed.
The last standing bastion of the 1635 city wall, which once had nine; the other eight were demolished as the port grew after 1880. Inside sits Las Joyas del Pescador, pre-Hispanic gold recovered from the seabed by a fisherman in 1976.
Working 1910 lighthouse and naval headquarters where Carranza ran the country through 1915 and issued the decrees that fed into the 1917 Constitution. His preserved office and the Revolution gallery sit above the beacon room.
Colonial house on Zaragoza tracing the port from Totonac trade to its four foreign invasions: Spain in 1825, France in 1838, the United States in 1847 and again in 1914. Strong rooms on slavery, the Inquisition tribunal and yellow fever.
Working-class quarter of wooden patio tenements thrown up from the 1880s for dockers and Afro-Caribbean migrants. Much of the port's danzón and son jarocho culture was formed in these shared courtyards off Callejón Aquiles Serdán.
Housed in the 17th-century Betlehemita convent, later a hospital and then a barracks. Its archive holds more than a million negatives of the port — the 1914 occupation, the dockworkers, the hurricanes — shown in rotating exhibitions.
The tightest lane of the old quarter, ending where the walled city's freshwater lagoon once stood. Balconied houses ring the plazuela and its bell, the alarm rung against corsairs after Lorencillo sacked Veracruz in May 1683.