Chihuahua City

For a city ringed with highways and pocked by parking lots, Chihuahua has a really pleasant center. Here you'll find a pair of lovely plazas and more trees than you will probably see in any northern city of comparable size. Chihuahua, with a population of 750,000, feels considerably smaller than it is. Its two good museums are tied to key figures in the nation's history: Pancho Villa, the mustachioed revolutionary who helped overthrow Dictator Porfirio Díaz in 1910, and Padre Miguel Hidalgo, the priest known as the father of Mexican independence.