Cuernavaca
capital of the State of Morelos, Mexico
Cuernavaca is the capital and largest city of the state of Morelos in Mexico. Along with Chalcatzingo, it is likely one of the origins of the Mesoamerican civilization. Olmec works of art, displayed in the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, were found in the Gualupita III archeological site.
The city is located south of Mexico City, reachable via a 90-minute drive along
the Federal Highway 95D.
The name Cuernavaca is a euphonism derived from the Nahuatl toponym Cuauhnāhuac and means 'surrounded by or close to trees'. The name was Hispanicized to Cuernavaca; Hernán Cortés called it Coadnabaced in his letters to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and Bernal Díaz del Castillo used the name Cuautlavaca in his chronicles. The coat-of-arms of the municipality is based on the pre-Columbian pictograph emblem of the city that depicts a tree trunk (cuahuitl) with three branches, with foliage, and four roots colored red. There is a cut in the trunk in the form of a mouth, from which emerges a speech scroll, probably representing the language Nahuatl and by extension the locative suffix -nāhuac, meaning 'near'.
Cuernavaca has long been a favorite escape for Mexico City residents and foreign visitors because of its warm, stable climate and abundant vegetation. The municipality was designated a Forest Protection Zone by President Lázaro Cárdenas in 1937 to protect the aquifers, the vegetation, and the quality of life of residents, both in Mexico City and locally. The city was nicknamed the "City of Eternal Spring" by Alexander von Humboldt in the 19th century.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q204245. VIAF identifies the subject as 125489559. The Library of Congress control number is n80097922. Authority coordinates are 18.919, -99.234. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1937.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cuernavaca” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.