Tlalpujahua is a small mountain town in eastern Michoacán, high enough for cool evenings and steep enough that its stone streets feel built into the hillside. It was once a rich gold-mining centre; today it is better known for Christmas ornaments, church towers, and the melancholy remains of a mining disaster that buried part of the town in 1937.
The centre has the compact charm expected of a Pueblo Mágico: red-tile roofs, pink stone, balconies, and a main church that looks surprisingly lavish for a town this size. The best sight is not polished colonial nostalgia, though, but the Dos Estrellas mine, where the scale of the old industry becomes real.
Tlalpujahua works well as a short detour between Mexico City, Morelia, and the monarch butterfly sanctuaries. Come in the months before Christmas if you want the ornament workshops at full sparkle, or in butterfly season if you are pairing the town with the forests nearby.