Living history: one of Mexico's smallest states, Queretaro houses a wealth of formative history. (Living in Mexico).

Conservative and deeply Catholic, affluent but discreet, modern-day Queretaro seems an improbable site for some of the most seismic events in Mexican history.

The largely pedestrian center of town, with a chain of pleasant, leafy colonial plazas dotted with bandstands, fountains and statues, and packed with sidewalk cafes and restaurants, has a friendly, relaxed village atmosphere.

The tiled domes of palacios and churches, most dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, dot the city's flat skyline in such numbers that the casual visitor cannot keep track.

Founded in the 1400s by the Otomi indigenous group, Queretaro--the name means "stony place"--was absorbed by the Aztecs before being taken over by the Spaniards in 1531.

By the brutal standards of the period, the conquest took place without too much bloodshed. According to local legend, this was possible thanks to the appearance of Saint James in the sky, along with a glowing cross, prompting the indians to lay down their arms and convert to Christianity. In 1996, the city formally took back its historic name of Santiago de Queretaro.

Queretaro quickly grew into one of the most important cities in New Spain and was briefly made the capital. Nowadays, Queretaro is an industrial city of some 500,000 residents, with a long list of transnational companies with plants on its outskirts, and is a bastion of President Vicente Fox's National Action Party (PAN). It is also the adopted home of many Mexico City natives fleeing the noise, dirt, crime and chaos of the overpowering capital, some two hours drive southeast.

WHERE HISTORY IS MADE

Queretaro's past makes it one of Mexico's most historic cities.

Milestone events include the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which meant handing over much of Texas, New Mexico, California, Arizona and bits of Utah and Colorado to the United States; the execution of Emperor Maximilian in 1867; the drawing up and signing of Mexico's Constitution in 1916-17 during the Revolution, and the founding in 1929 of the National Revolutionary Party--the Institutional Revolutionary Party's (PRI) predecessor.

And it was here, in 1810, where Mexico's independence activists first began to take action. Agitators, including the priest Miguel Hidalgo (known as the father of the independence movement), met in the Casa de la Corregidora, pretending to hold literary discussion groups.

Under the Spanish colonial system, the corregidores were the equivalent of modem-day state governors and second only to the viceroy. Famously, the corregidor's wife, Josefa Ortiz, a.k.a La Corregidora, played a key role in these meetings.

Indeed, when her husband found out about the conspirators on Sept. 14, 1810, he locked up his wife as he set about the task of rounding them up. She managed to get a message through a keyhole that was then relayed to Hidalgo in his parish in Dolores, prompting him to make the Grito, or call to arms that sparked the war of independence.

Today, tourists can enter the Casa de la Corregidora, although the room where Dona Josefa was locked up is off-limits. However, in the large courtyard next door; home to the state prison until the late 1970s, the niches in the walls where obstreperous prisoners were chained and the guard's watch post looking down on the patio are both still visible.

Apparently, it was the cries of inmates being tortured and executed that helped drive an anguished Dona Josefa, listening next door, into the conspiracy of Hidalgo and his colleagues. There is little evidence today about the state of her marriage and the effect on it of her political differences with her husband. But given that the couple had between 10 and 12 children, depending on which historian you read, it must have been a happy union, at least for the first decade or so.

But it was not until nearly six decades later, in 1867, that the incident for which Queretaro is most known took place: the capture and execution of Emperor Maximilian as the French Intervention collapsed into chaos following the return to Europe of 30,000 troops.

Maximilian cut a tragic figure, well-intentioned but out of his depth. A Hapsburg, he had been plucked from the Austro-Hungarian court and sent by the French to rule Mexico with the support of the Church and conservative groups. A liberal despite his upbringing, he soon alienated his small band of supporters in Mexico by refusing to repeal anti-clerical legislation.

After a two-month siege of Queretaro, Maximilian was captured and tried. Today, in the Convento de la Cruz, you can still see the Spartan room where the emperor directed his forces during the siege and was then kept prisoner for two days.

The monastery is said to have been built on the spot below which Saint James and his cross first appeared. It is also the scene of another "miracle," a tree with thorns in the shape of the crucifix that is said to have grown from a walking stick forced into the earth in 1697 by a passing friar traveling from Central America to Texas.

The tree, known as the Arbol de la Cruz (Tree of the Cross), certainly has some impressive thorns. About one in five even have three extra spikes where the nails would have been. What would a botanist make of the guides' claims that the plant is unique? One taxi driver in Queretaro proudly displays a branch of similar barbs on his dashboard, taken, he claims, from his mother's garden some two miles from the monastery.

OF EMPERORS AND PRIESTS

Way out on the other side of the city is the Cerro de las Campanas (Hill of the Bells), where Maximilian was shot. It is so known because of the metallic ring made by the local rocks when struck against each other because of the iron and zinc ore that they contain. The keeper at the simple chapel marking the execution spot on the gently-sloping hill will be only too happy to give you a demonstration of this geological feature with a large stone kept specially for that purpose.

Pathetically, the door to Maximilian's carriage stuck shut as he arrived at the execution spot and the Emperor had to climb out through the window. Executed with two of his generals, Maximilian is said to have given each member of the firing squad a gold peso coin not to shoot at his face.

His last words also appear to have been impossibly idealistic and dignified given the Machiavellian scheming on both sides of the Atlantic that characterized his time in Mexico: "May mine be the last blood shed in this campaign. Long live Mexico!"

The chapel was built at the turn of the 20th century at the request of the Hapsburgs. Amenable with the great foreign powers, Porfirio Diaz not only agreed to their plea but even footed the bill. He did, however, channel the funds through a New York bank account to prevent his countrymen from discovering that the chapel was not actually being paid for by the Austro-Hungarian empire.

In the Museo Regional in the center of town, an eclectic collection includes the basic unsanded coffin, painted in black, yellow and white, that was used to take Maximilian's body from the hill. Another exhibit, a bust of La Corregidora, reveals her to have had more than a passing resemblance to Dulce Maria Sauri, the no-nonsense former president of the PRI, a comparison that ought to please the latter.

The museum is made up of a former cloister and chapel, and is much bigger from the inside than it appears from the Jardin Zenea, one of the few main squares in the country known by a proper name rather the generic term, Zocalo. The desk where the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, an event many Mexicans are still trying to forget, is also found in the museum.

Next to it is the splendid neo-classical Church of San Francisco. Formerly a cathedral, it was demoted in the ecclesiastical hierarchy at the request of the Franciscans, whose humility and desire to be close to the poor did not sit with the pomp and power of running the city cathedral.

Beyond the Convento de la Cruz, in the east of the city, is another of Queretaro's sights, a mile-long aqueduct, known as Los Arcos, the result of one of the biggest construction projects in Spanish colonial America. When construction was finished in 1735, the city erupted into two weeks of festivities with banquets, bullfights and concerts.

The aqueduct was mainly paid for by one of Queretaro's biggest benefactors, the Marques de la Villa del Villar del Aguila, whose statue stands in the Plaza de la Independencia. More commonly known as the Plaza de la Armas, the square, a stone's throw from the Jardin Zenea, and shaded from the sun by trees and a series of arches, is also home to the baroque Casa de la Corregidora.

The Marques and his wife lived separately--both took lovers, it is said--and the Casa de la Marquesa, just off the Jardin Zenea, is now one of Queretaro's top hotel and worth a peek even if you are not staying there. Famous guests here have included the self-proclaimed emperor, Agustin de Iturbide, in 1821. During the revolution, President Venustiano Carranza made it his foreign ministry in 1917.

Not far from the Casa de la Marquesa is the Teatro de la Republica, an elegant, neo-classical structure and home of the state orchestra, one of the best in the country. It was here that the military tribunal sat in judgement of Maximilian. Suffering from a stomach bug and ever the gentleman, he had given them permission to try him in his absence.

Almost exactly 60 years later, the Constitution still in force in Mexico today, was signed here.

Nowadays, Santiago de Queretaro seems to have finally shaken off its tendency to be at the center of historic events. Indeed, it is hard to imagine anything really urgent going on here, a fact that is a large part of the modem day city's charm.

Simeon Tegel is a Mexico City-based freelance writer and seasoned traveler.