Puerto Vallarta was a relatively small, quiet fishing town until 1963, when director John Huston chose the nearby jungle coastline to film The Night of the Iguana, starring Richard Burton, a production that drew international press attention largely because of Burton’s very public affair with Elizabeth Taylor, who accompanied him during filming despite having no role in the movie itself. That media frenzy introduced Puerto Vallarta to a global audience almost overnight, transforming a sleepy coastal town into an internationally recognised destination within just a few years.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton later purchased homes in Puerto Vallarta, and their presence helped cement the town’s reputation as a glamorous escape, a legacy still referenced today at Casa Kimberly, Burton’s former home, now operated as a boutique hotel and small museum dedicated to the couple’s connection to the town.
A Town That Kept Its Cobblestones on Purpose
Unlike many rapidly developed Mexican resort destinations, Puerto Vallarta’s historic centre, known as Zona Romantica and the older town core, has deliberately retained cobblestone streets, white-washed buildings, and red-tiled roofs, a conscious effort to preserve traditional Mexican town character even as tourism infrastructure expanded significantly around it. The Malecon, the town’s oceanfront boardwalk, is lined with public sculptures by various Mexican and international artists, transforming a simple promenade into an informal open-air gallery stretching along the bay.
Banderas Bay, on which Puerto Vallarta sits, is one of the largest bays in North America and serves as a significant winter breeding ground for humpback whales, drawing whale-watching tours each year to waters just offshore from the town’s beaches.
Painting Whitewashed Walls Against the Bay
Puerto Vallarta’s red-tiled rooftops and whitewashed walls against Banderas Bay give a watercolourist warm, traditional Mexican colour to work with. We’ve captured that character in our own Puerto Vallarta Watercolor Print, painted first by hand and printed to order on archival paper, a small piece of Mexico for a wall at home.
Discovered largely by accident through a film crew’s celebrity scandal, Puerto Vallarta remains a town whose global fame arrived almost entirely sideways, and stuck regardless.