Located just 20km north of Veracruz, the small town La Antigua reveals little of its past identity with its languid grid of sleepy, cobbled streets and moss-covered ruins. Regarded (wrongly) as the first Spanish town in Mexico, it was actually the second incarnation of Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz (which means "the rich village of the true cross). The first location of the settlement was on the sand dunes to which the city now stands, where Hernán Cortés and his band arrived in 1519. But this was never more than a camp, which existed only a few weeks.
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