``I don't know a soul, but I feel right at home," said Christina Cisneros, here from Arizona for a language course. She invites a visitor to share her bench across from the city's most elegant building, the neoclassical Teatro Juárez.
``Older people usually sit here, in the shade," she said. ``The university students sit over there, on the theater steps, to watch the mimes and wait for the estudiantinas [strolling street musicians] to arrive. If you wait long enough, you'll hear them sing."
Nearby is a bearded fellow in rumpled shorts and sandals, cameras dangling. A tourist, recognizable anywhere. What you won't see in Guanajuato, a colonial city of about 112,000 people tucked into the base of a steep ravine in the Sierra Madre , are colonies of expats, retirees in search of better climes and cheaper living.
Not that some Americans -- count us among them -- enchanted by Guanajuato's shady courtyards, winding lanes, and the advantages of a world-class university, are not tempted. Settled in 1548 and the capital of the state of Guanajuato, this is one of Mexico's best-preserved old cities, its steep hills and cobblestone streets echoing its Spanish ancestry. But the terrain and 6,500-foot elevation are tough on people with unsteady legs and arthritic hips.
In 1988, after UNESCO declared the city a World Heritage Site, the state redoubled restoration projects and introduced programs to increase tourism. But name recognition has been slow in coming to Guanajuato (pronounced wah-nah-WHA-toe), which means ``place of the frogs ."
Instead, foreigners seem to visit the city accidentally. Some discover it on packaged tours to Mexico's silver cities that usually include Taxco, Zacatecas, and San Luis Potosi. And some come in October for the annual International Cervantes Festival. This two-week event draws thousands of attendees for programs that have grown from dramatic skits and literary readings to seminars, theater productions, operas, jazz and orchestral music , and ballet.
