The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro includes five sites already inscribed on the World Heritage List and 55 other sites distributed along 1,400 of the 2,600 km of this long route that starts in northern Mexico and reaches Texas and New Mexico in the United States. Used between the 16th and 19th centuries, this road was used to transport silver extracted from the mines of Zacatecas, Guanajuato and San Luis Potosí, as well as mercury imported from Europe. Although its origin and use are linked to mining, the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro also fostered the establishment of social, cultural and religious links between Hispanic and Amerindian cultures.

Initiated by the Franciscan friar, Tembleque, and built with the local indigenous communities, this hydraulic system is an example of the exchange of influences between the European tradition of Roman hydraulics and traditional Mesoamerican construction techniques, including the use of adobe. The site incorporates the highest single-level arcade ever built in an aqueduct.

With an extraordinary view of the Mezquital Valley, Pañhú was contemporary with Teotihuacan, but developed separately and survived 400 years after the fall of the great metropolis. Little known, its study could help us to understand the origins of the Otomi groups.

Ancient settlement of hunter/gatherers and farmers, founded twenty centuries ago, influenced by Teotihuacan. It became a distribution center for the Acolhua, situated between the Altiplano (high plateau) and the Gulf Coast. There are notable cave paintings at Tres Peñas and El Tecolote.

The earliest archeological site in Hidalgo, with remains of cave paintings and a dramatic backdrop formed by sheer rock faces.

This Interpretation Gallery, dedicated to a well-known Mexican archeologist and restorer, is a great place to visit before seeing the Tula Giants. There are some exceptional pieces: a fragment of a pilaster with images of Tlaloc, the kind god and Tezcaltipoca, the fateful one; a unique jaguar in a single piece and the mysterious chacmools.

The venerable seventeenth-century former monastery of San Francisco in Pachuca houses an extremely rich collection of images from the nineteenth century onwards, featuring historical events, daily life, landscapes and visual essays. There are important collections of Tina Modotti, Nacho López, Guillermo Kahlo, and not least the collection amassed by Agustín Víctor Casasola.

A key city in the history of the Altiplano (Central Highlands), the great Toltec capital from the year 1000 left vast remains full of monuments and artistic treasures. It influenced the peninsular and  Central American Maya, and the cultures of the Gulf coast, Anahuac and the western regions.