Orizaba

Orizaba (Spanish: [oɾiˈsaβa] , Nahuatl: Ahuilizapan, Otomi: Mbo'ñu) is a city and municipality in the Mexican state of Veracruz. It is located 20 km west of its sister city Córdoba, and is adjacent to Río Blanco and Ixtaczoquitlán, on Federal Highways 180 and 190. The city had a 2020 census population of 120,500 and is almost coextensive with its small municipality, with only a few small areas outside the city. The municipality, with an area of 27.97 km2 (10.799 sq mi), had a population of 123,182. While the metropolitan area of Orizaba has a population of 462,261 as 2020.

In 2015, Orizaba earned the designation of Pueblo Mágico from Mexico's federal government and celebrated the 10-year anniversary of this designation in October of 2025. The Pueblo Mágico program grants this designation to towns that offer visitors "cultural richness, historical relevance, cuisine, art crafts, and great hospitality."

In the town of Ixhuatlancillo north of Orizaba, and in a large mountainous area to the south (the Sierra de Zongolica), live many thousands of people who speak a variant of Nahuatl which is often called Orizaba Nahuatl (ISO code nlv).

Naming

It is generally understood that the name Orizaba comes from a Hispanicized pronunciation of the Nahuatl name Āhuilizāpan [a: wi li sa: pan], which means "place of pleasing waters." Another possibility, however, is the word Harish (Jerez de la Frontera, Andalusia, in 16th-century Spanish pronunciation), this place being the hometown of the first Spanish settlers (1521) of Orizaba. Harish or—in a simplified form—Ariz, with the addition (under the influence of the Arabic language) of the gentilic "i" and/or with the ending "aba", meaning fortification, would have become Ariziba or Arizaba, from which Orizaba would have derived. (The word Harish—in turn—is, according to some authors, linked to the capital of Tartessus and could refer to the biblical Tarshish.