Heritage tourism makes up an important part of the city's economy, and it has numerous colonial-era structures as well as significant archeological sites and elements of the continuing native Zapotec and Mixtec cultures. Oaxaca city is the site of the month-long cultural festival called the "Guelaguetza", which features Oaxacan dance from the seven regions, music, and a beauty pageant for indigenous women.
The city is also known as la Verde Antequera (the green Antequera) due to its prior Spanish name (Nueva Antequera) and the variety of structures built from a native green stone. The name Oaxaca is derived from the Nahuatl name for the place, Huaxyacac, which was Hispanicized to Guajaca, later spelled Oaxaca. In 1872, "de Juárez" was added in honor of Benito Juárez, a native of this state who became president, serving from 1852 to 1872, and leading the country through challenges, including an invasion by France. The Zapotec name of the city, Ndua, is still used in the Zapotec language (Tlacolula Zapotec). The coat of arms for the municipality bears the image of Donají, a Zapotec woman hostage killed and beheaded by the Mixtec in conflict immediately after the Conquest.
Of the 27 churches in Oaxaca, none can match the splendor of the interior of Santo Domingo de Guzmán Church. The church was started in the 1550s by Dominican friars and completed a century later; it contains the work of the best artists of this period. Ornate plaster statues and flowers cover the extravagantly gilded walls and ceiling. When the sun shines through the yellow stained glass, it casts a golden glow on the interior, like a baroque vision of heaven. As you enter, gaze up at the ceiling formed by the choir loft to examine the elaborate organizational tree of the Dominican order, which begins with Don Domingo de Guzmán, Saint Dominic himself.
Just ten kilometers from the city of Oaxaca lies Monte Albán, one of the very first cities in the new world. It is the largest archeological site in Oaxaca.
Besides being one of the earliest cities of Mesoamerica, Monte Albán was important for nearly one thousand years as the pre-eminent Zapotec socio-political and economic center. Founded toward the end of the Middle Formative period at around 500 BC, by the Terminal Formative (c. 100 BC – AD 200) Monte Albán had become the capital of a large-scale expansionist polity that dominated much of the Oaxacan highlands and interacted with other Mesoamerican regional states, such as Teotihuacan to the north (Paddock 1983; Marcus 1983). The city lost its political pre-eminence by the end of the Late Classic (c. AD 500–750), and soon thereafter was largely abandoned. Small-scale reoccupation, opportunistic reuse of earlier structures and tombs, and ritual visitations marked the archaeological history of the site into the Colonial period.
Monte Albán is a popular tourist destination for visitors to Oaxaca. Its small museum on site displays mostly original carved stones from the site. The site received 429,702 visitors in 2017.
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