The Alley of the Kiss

The Alley of the Kiss is a flight of steps about 68 centimetres wide climbing from the Plaza de los Ángeles in the historic centre of Guanajuato. The story told there — a rich family's daughter, a poor miner, two balconies that almost touch, and a father who stabs her — is presented as colonial, yet not even the names hold still: depending on who is telling it, she is Ana or Carmen and he is Carlos or Luis. No document about those people is known, and the legend does not appear in the contents of Agustín Lanuza's Romances, tradiciones y leyendas guanajuatenses (1908), the first major gathering of the city's folklore, which does include traditions tied to specific streets and squares. The custom of kissing on the third step, painted red, promises seven years of luck according to the guides and fifteen according to the city's official page. What is firmly dated is the legend's loudspeaker: the callejoneadas of the university estudiantina, founded in 1962, in a city declared a Zone of Historic Monuments in 1982.

The Alley of the Kiss is real, as narrow as they say, and it climbs where they say it climbs. The only thing missing is the paperwork. Start with the city, because it explains the stage set without any love story at all. Guanajuato was built inside a ravine, on top of a silver vein, and grew upwards because there was nowhere else to grow. In 1908 an American traveller, Cora Bosworth Glasier Myers, published a whole book about the city in Milwaukee — A City of Dreams (Guanajuato) — and put it plainly: as the town grew it "had of necessity to climb the steep hills, and economise in room even to inches, compelling narrowest streets and flat roofs". Her hotel, she wrote, faced "what seemed to be an alley, but was really one of the widest streets": eighteen feet at the corner, down to nine, back up to sixteen. In a city like that, a passage sixty-odd centimetres wide is not an anomaly demanding an explanation. It is the ordinary fabric of the place. The alley itself is a short flight of steps rising from the Plaza de los Ángeles, on Avenida Benito Juárez, branching off the Callejón del Patrocinio a few metres above the square. The city government gives its width as 68 cm, and the name is old: the municipal division of 1879, printed by Lucio Marmolejo in 1883, already lists a "callejón del Beso" beside the Plazuela de los Ángeles and the callejón del Patrocinio. The third step is painted red. The story told there runs roughly like this. A wealthy family's daughter leans out onto her balcony at night. A poor miner sees her from the balcony opposite, an arm's length away. The father — a man of arms, of honour and of business — had other plans: marriage to an old nobleman in Spain. He finds them, comes in with a dagger and kills her. The miner gets one last kiss, and the alley its name. The trouble is that not even the names hold still. In 2023 the reporter Velio Ortega transcribed, for the Guanajuato paper Notus, the literal opening of the guides' script: "This is the love story of doña Ana (although last week's teller said she was doña Carmen)…". In some versions she is Ana and he is Carlos; in others she is Carmen and he is Luis; the father turns up as "don Emiliano". The dates drift just as freely: some outlets place the killing in 1705, others leave it at "colonial times", and the city's own visitor page gives none at all. Nor is the reward agreed: guides promise seven years of good luck to couples who kiss on the third step — and seven years of bad luck to those who do not — while the municipal page offers fifteen. There is one book where the paperwork ought to be. In 1908 the Guanajuato writer Agustín Lanuza (1870-1936) published, in Mexico City with E. Gómez de la Fuente, Romances, tradiciones y leyendas guanajuatenses, 328 pages: the first major gathering of his city's folklore, made by a man of the city. The copy digitised by the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León lets anyone read its full table of contents. It holds La ciudad encantada, El cerro del Meco, El cantador, Pípila, El milagro del padre Serenito, El conde de la Cadena, El pachón, El coche de don Melchor, Albino García, La plazuela de los Carcamanes, El giro, Nuestra Señora de Guanajuato, Las cabezas de los héroes, Las velas del padre, El diablo en los ejercicios, Los hospitales, El señor de Villaseca, El Colegio del Estado, La laguna de sangre, Fray Antonio, La calle del Truco and El clarín de órdenes, among others. More than twenty pieces, several of them anchored to one specific street or square: "The Street of the Trick", "The Little Square of the Carcamanes". This was exactly Lanuza's genre. The Alley of the Kiss does not appear in his contents. Myers's book, from the same year, points the same way. It is the account of a foreigner who stayed a while, walked the alleys, described the balconies, went down into the mummy vaults and paused over the city's "stories and traditions". Her text never uses kiss, beso or callejón, and alley appears only for streets she describes, among them the one outside her hotel, which "seemed to be an alley, but was really one of the widest streets". Two books from 1908 — one local, one foreign; one of legends, one of travel — and neither has an alley of the kiss in it. There is more. Ortega adds a material detail which, if accurate, is devastating: he states that photographs from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries show the right-hand house with a terrace full of flowerpots and no balcony at all, and that the balcony was built in the 1950s. In the same piece he notes that the traditional prints put the man in the left-hand house and the girl in the right-hand one, and that today the guides tell it the other way round. The scenery of the legend, in other words, is younger than the legend — and the legend is far younger than the period it claims. That leaves the vehicle. What carries the story to thousands of people every night is the callejoneada, the sung night walk, and its origin is dated: the Estudiantina de la Universidad de Guanajuato came together in March 1962 and made its official debut on Friday 13 April 1963 in the Plazuela de San Roque, according to the university itself. From there came the nightly musical tours that now stop at the Alley of the Kiss. The city was declared a Zone of Historic Monuments on 28 July 1982, and the alley has been one of its fixed postcards ever since.

Where it is. The alley climbs from the Plaza de los Ángeles, on Avenida Benito Juárez, in the Zona Centro of Guanajuato city. The state government's attractions listing gives the address as Belén 22, Zona Centro, 36000 Guanajuato, Gto. Milenio describes the approach as a dozen paces up the Callejón del Patrocinio from the plaza, with the steps dropping away on the left. Approximate coordinates of the steps: 21.0164 N, 101.2565 W, some fifty metres from the plaza. The Mercado Hidalgo lies about 200 metres to the north-west and the Jardín de la Unión about 380 metres to the east. What it costs. Milenio states that entering the alley costs nothing; it is a public street, with no opening hours. The third step is painted red, and the state listing promises a couple who kiss on it fifteen years of good fortune. What is charged for is the photograph. Milenio reported in October 2023 that couples buying the official set pay 200 pesos for one portrait in a frame and two more on paper. Notus reported in August 2023 a charge of 50 pesos per person to go up to the balcony, plus 100 pesos for the printed photograph. The balcony opens and closes. Access to the interiors has been shut for long stretches by a dispute between the owner of Doña Ana's balcony and the photographers who work the alley. In October 2022 the city council closed the alley altogether and reopened it on the 8th, after an agreement between the two sides. On 13 February 2025 La Silla Rota found the entrance shut again, under a municipal suspension order, with signs on the door reading "Murió la ley". The steps themselves stayed open through both episodes. The passage. The state listing gives the alley as 68 centimetres wide, the measurement on which the whole legend turns, and Milenio gives the same figure for the gap between the two balconies. These are stone steps without a continuous handrail, so a wheelchair cannot use them and two people cannot pass abreast. The callejoneada. Guanajuato's sung night walks are led by an estudiantina in costume. Milenio reported in January 2023 that they leave from the atrium of the Templo de San Diego, facing the Jardín de la Unión, at 21:15 from Monday to Thursday and at 19:45 and 21:15 at weekends, for 185 pesos an adult and 130 a child. Those were the figures published in January 2023. Around it. The Mercado Hidalgo opened in 1910. The whole of the old city was declared a Zone of Historic Monuments on 28 July 1982.