Historical Town The Royal of the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cosala in Sinaloa
World Heritage Office (INAH) Mexico's National Commission for UNESCO (CONALMEX)Puebla 95, Col. R
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Description
Cosalá was named Royal Mines by the Spanish authorities, and it also was a trade exchange center for the rest of the mines located near by. The church seat and the military authorities were also there, together with the Assay House. Through the years, the city became very important and in 1826 it was named the capital of the Western State that included the present states of Sonora and Sinaloa in Mexico, and Arizona in the United States.
Surrounded by mountains, which are an integral part of its urban image, Cosalá has three clearly differentiated areas in its monument zone: the historical downtown area, La Canela and the Llano de Carrera neighborhoods. Because of its topography the historical downtown area consists of a totally irregular geomorphic design, the essence of which has been kept up to now, creating streets and side streets that end unexpectedly to surprise us with beautiful corners and visual ends everywhere. The value of its architecture is fundamentally provided by the characteristics it has as a whole: constructions lined to its streets, with adobe walls that end in a molding between the wall and the roof tiles provide a constant and marked homogeneity to their image; the use of materials found in the region such as beam, reed and bamboo roofs, with mud and tiles, is an evidence of how the architecture in the town is fully integrated to nature. The more than one-meter wide adobe walls, in some cases, work as thermal insulation for temperature changes. While in the historical downtown area houses are aligned to the street and have arched patios inside, at Llano de la Carrera their architecture corresponds to the typological characteristics of the rural architecture of the northwest of Mexico: constructions backed from the street alignment, with a tiled porch at the front and another one inside, and a central body that corresponds to the rooms.