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. It is 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; guides usually say 65 and other publications 69. 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. Hence the 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. So we went looking for the paperwork. And there is one book where it 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". We searched her full text for kiss, beso, callejón and alley: nothing appears attached to anything resembling this legend. 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.

The alley is walked on foot, it is free, and it sits in the middle of the old town. What is expensive — and contentious — is everything that has been built on top of it. Where it is. It rises from the Plaza de los Ángeles, on Avenida Benito Juárez, in the Zona Centro of Guanajuato city (postcode 36000), roughly midway between the Jardín de la Unión and the Mercado Hidalgo. From the square, walk a few metres up the Callejón del Patrocinio: the Alley of the Kiss drops away on the left, a flight of steps some twenty metres long, recognisable by the two ochre façades and by the crowd. Approximate coordinates of the steps: 21.0164 N, 101.2565 W. Getting there. On foot, and there is no sensible alternative. From the Jardín de la Unión it is about ten level minutes along Avenida Juárez towards the Mercado Hidalgo. Driving is a bad idea: the centre is pedestrianised and threaded with tunnels, and there is nowhere to stop. Any taxi or city bus that drops you at the Mercado Hidalgo or the Plaza de la Paz will do. What it costs. Walking through the alley is free and has no opening hours — it is a public street. The third step is painted red, and that is where couples kiss. What is charged for is the photograph: the photographers working there offer packages that in recent years have run to 100-200 pesos (for example, three portraits — one framed, two on paper — for 200). When the balcony of "Ana's house" has been open, entry for the balcony-to-balcony kiss has been charged separately, at around 50 pesos per person plus the photo. Check prices on the spot and ask before you pose; there is no official tariff. Important warning: the balcony opens and closes. Access to the interiors has been shut for long stretches because of a dispute between the owner and the photographers. In October 2022 the city council closed the alley for three days and reopened it on the 8th after an agreement; by February 2025 the conflict was back, with boarded-up closure notices and signs reading "The law has died" on the door. Do not assume you will get up onto the balcony. The alley itself, by contrast, can always be walked. Crowds and access. This is one of the most visited spots in the city, and at weekends, on public holidays and above all during the Festival Internacional Cervantino (October) there is a queue to kiss on the step. To see it empty, come first thing in the morning. Accessibility is close to nil: these are steep stone steps with no continuous handrail, and the passage is about 68 cm wide, so people cross one at a time. It is not viable in a wheelchair and awkward with a pushchair. Wear shoes with grip — the stone has been polished by millions of feet. The callejoneada. This is how most people arrive here after dark, and it is worth doing for its own sake: a sung procession behind an estudiantina in costumes modelled on old Spanish university dress, with stops, jokes and legends. It leaves from the atrium of the Templo de San Diego, facing the Jardín de la Unión, Monday to Thursday at 21:15 and at weekends in two departures, 19:45 and 21:15; it lasts up to two hours and takes in the Alley of the Kiss. The reference price is 185 pesos for adults and 130 for children, bought from street sellers or in advance at callejoneadas.mx. Bear in mind that what you will hear there is the tourist version: the names, the dates and the years of luck change with whoever is holding the microphone. What else is a step away. The Mercado Hidalgo (1910), the Basilica of Our Lady of Guanajuato and the Plaza de la Paz are five minutes off; the Diego Rivera birthplace museum and the Museo del Pueblo, on Calle Positos, about ten. And if the documentary trail in this file interested you, Lanuza's 1908 book and Cora Myers's book of the same year can both be read free and complete online — the best way to check for yourself what is claimed here.