Pachuca is the capital of Hidalgo, but it feels less like a polished state capital than a working mining city that has learned to enjoy its oddities. The centre climbs around narrow streets, plazas, churches, and the Reloj Monumental, a clock tower that has become the city's shorthand.
The city calls itself La Bella Airosa, the beautiful windy one, and the name is fair. Strong afternoon wind rolls through the valley, past old mining districts and hillsides of painted houses. Pachuca's Cornish mining connection left a small but stubborn legacy: football arrived early here, and the local paste is a Mexican cousin of the Cornish pasty.
The best day in Pachuca stays close to the old centre, then climbs. Start around Plaza Independencia and the San Francisco complex, visit the Museo de la Fotografía for Mexico's photographic memory, then go up to Cristo Rey for the view back across the city and the old mining hills.
Pachuca is also a useful base for the Comarca Minera landscape north of town, especially Real del Monte, Mineral del Chico, and the basalt prisms near Huasca de Ocampo. Those places are the bigger excursion, but Pachuca itself has enough character for a spare day from Mexico City.