Arts and Culture Centers in Rosarito

In Rosarito, culture is around every corner. For a few years now, the State Center for the Arts (Centro Estatal de las Artes – CEART) has been training, teaching and promoting all artistic expressions, such as theatre, dance, music, creative writing and photography. There are also exhibitions, conferences, symposiums, concerts and courses.  

In the same complex as the Teatro del Pueblo theater and the Cultural Center is the Municipal Institute of Arts and Culture (Instituto Municipal de Arte y Cultura – IMAC), an arts and culture space offering workshops, events and activities designed to promote and encourage creativity.  

In Punta Descanso, visitors will find the Centro Histórico y Cultural Calafia, a historic and cultural center, where the city’s chronicler, Conrado Acevedo, created a rather unusual outdoor space, a sort of park where the past comes to life.

The Plaza de las Misiones square is the starting point. Here you will see reproductions of the church facades of the Dominican El Descanso and the Franciscan San Diego de Alcalá, as well as that of Nuestra Señora de Loreto, the very first mission which was established on the peninsula of Baja California. There is also a cross inscribed with the date 1773, and the place which the Franciscans and Dominicans established as the border between Old and New California.

A small gallery exhibits fossils from the Cretaceous period and pre-Hispanic artifacts, as well as gates, arcades, crockery, cutlery, bottles, lamps and tiles that once decorated the old Casino de Agua Caliente. 

There are also documents and facsimiles with the seal of the Viceroy who granted permission for California to be evangelized, or the Spanish chivalric novel Las sergas de Esplandián (“The Adventures of Esplandián”), which gave rise to the legend of Queen Calafia and the Island of California.  

The hallway which leads into the dining rooms may well remind you of the movie Titanic, and with good reason; it was actually used for the scenography.