Chiautempan

Chiautempan, or Santa Ana Chiautempan, is part of the metro area of the Tlaxcala state capital region. The main town is positioned as a suburb or even a neighborhood on the east side of the larger capital city although it's technically a separate municipality. Most visitors will arrive after a trip to the capital. Chiautempan is home to some 50,000 people, and the name derives from the Nahuatl word, chiawtenpan, meaning roughly on the shore of the wetland.

Chiautempan is known as the birthplace of the beloved Mexican sarape, the traditional and age-old woven shawl, worn across one or the other shoulder of nearly the entire country and especially in colder and mountainous climates. Woven on traditional looms, today artisans use both wool and modern fibers and every year the town hosts a Sarape fair in August to celebrate these local creations. People gather from all over the region to exhibit and sell, and to show off traditional techniques and modern innovations.

The fair is held in the conjunction with the feast and procession of Saint Anne so it includes rondalla music, mariachis, brass bands, fireworks, and parades of traditional costumes in the town center. 

Visitors arrive nearly year-round to tour the many churches and other sites in and around the center. The Church of Saint Anne offers an especially enchanting, colorful interior, and seems to have been in competition with the church of San Bernardino Contla to the northeast in the neighboring municipality. All of these places are on the foot of the great and foreboding Malinche volcano.  It's often visible to the east and it seems to deeply affect the tone and color of life here. 

If you're in the town center, don't miss a trip to the Hidalgo Municipal Market. It's directly northeast of the Gothic Our Lady of Carmen church, although the happenings in and around the market will spread into the surrounding streets.