Arts & Culture

Here you can enjoy cultural festivals, art and sculpture galleries, wherever you go and throughout the year.

Vallarta began its changes in 1960 when Liz Taylor, Richard Burton, and Eva Gardner visited the beautiful Bay of Banderas to film a movie called “The Night of the Iguana“.

This movie was the spearhead for this destination, helping it become a more attractive place for all kinds of artists. Filmmakers, sculptors, musicians, painters, and others began to make Puerto Vallarta their place for inspiration and expression.

These, and other reasons are the basis of the artistic soul of Vallarta and it has grown tremendously with the development of this beautiful city and has been a muse for national and international talent.

So this great cultural heritage has helped this tourist destination become more than just a tropical beach destination you can spend a short time visiting, Vallarta is so much more and this is reflected not only in regular visitors, you can see it in the number of foreigners that choose the city as their permanent home.

Another positive factor in this equation is that Puerto Vallarta is located very close to the northern neighboring countries, which makes both travel to and back, short, easy and cheap.

These are some of the reasons why Vallarta is nowadays a fabulous cultural center that offers an excellent blend of the best of the local native culture and traditional art together with exhibitions and galleries of contemporary art.

It is now well known that Puerto Vallarta offers a growing number of cultural activities, a large number of festivals are held here annually.

All of them try to promote cultural areas such as sports, gourmet cuisine, and the arts, of course. We should not either forget the regular events such as film festivals, wine festivals, jazz festivals, environmental events and more.

And among the most important yearly events, we have to mention a food festival, the International Gourmet Festival. Over several days different chefs from many parts of the world visit the shores of Puerto Vallarta to delight with their incredible and delicious creations, which are able to please even the most discerning palates.

Within the creations of these artists visitors can enjoy dishes with flavors from all over the world, but certainly, you can also enjoy the delicious and unique flavors of Mexico too. Each year the number of participants in this gourmet food festival grows, as well as the countless related events.

So do not miss the opportunity to visit Puerto Vallarta and sample the delights these international artists have to offer, or if you are a chef, you can be part of this event, and show your talent and at the same time discover one of the most beautiful places Mexico has to offer.