The sunsets are spectacular in Mazatlán, spreading rich colors across the Mexican sky. This one was captured from the top of the Hotel Posada Freeman, which also offers sweeping vistas of downtown.

Photos by Stuart Wasserman for the Arizona Daily Star

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At 9:30 a.m., Mazatlán's Plaza Machado is coming alive. A slim, middle-aged man brings out the wooden tables and chairs from the Altazor Restaurant and art coffeehouse, a university-run enterprise and bookstore that offers great breakfasts at great prices set on a European-size square.

A small group of Americans gathers for morning chess. Meanwhile, students carrying tubas and trombones cross the plaza toward the stately 19th-century building that houses both Mazatlán's ornate Opera House and the city's municipal arts collegio. In addition to student performances, the theater draws national and international cultural acts from Europe and elsewhere in Latin America.

Downtown Mazatlán is being gentrified, and much of it is being guided by the helping hand of a forward-thinking volunteer organization of engineers, architects and entrepreneurs called Centro Proyecto Historico.

The renaissance is taking place around the Plazuela Machado, the heart of this culturally rich and diverse historic community — and only about a 15-minute cab ride from the beaches that make Mazatlán one of the most popular spring-break destinations for American college students.

The architecture of the centro district around the plaza could be described as neoclassical, or what Don Antonio Haas, a respected local elder, aptly calls "neo-tropical." To some, it also brings back memories of the designs around the French Quarter of New Orleans.

The oldest building, the Portales de Canobbio, spans the width of a block and has an impressive row of arches. It is a two-story structure built in 1846 by an Italian family whose members lived upstairs and ran a general store below.

Alfredo Gómez Rubio, president of the Centro Proyecto Historico, calls the Canobbio House "Mazatlán's first building of commerce." The building was a combination feed, supply and hardware store. Today it houses the Museo Casa Machado, which features a 19th-century collection of French and Austrian furniture, home decorations and antiques.

Mazatlán's French heritage stems from the Frenchmen who served in the army of Emperor Maximilian in the mid-1860s. Mazatlán's residents take great pride in their 1864 battle in which residents' cannon fire repelled an attack from the French battleship La Cordeliere and sent the ship packing.

The battle took place along the beachfront not too far from Machado Square. Each year as part of the city's carnival celebration in February, the 1864 battle is re-enacted. Fireworks are shot off from a ship at sea, and a response is given from the hillside where the rusty artillery still stands as a reminder. There are parades, fireworks and street dancing along the Avenida del Mar.

On Saturday nights, arts-and-crafts people set up booths on the square and give it a Berkeley bohemian feel. Sundays, a festival ambience takes over with vendors selling cotton candy and balloons, while families parade around the square.

Restaurants and bars like Pedro y Lola (named after two widely popular singers of the 1940s and '50s, Pedro Infante and Lola Beltran) and the Pacific Cafe are popping up around the Plazuela Machado, as well as a handful of expanding art galleries like NidArt located down the block from the Opera House.

Gracia Morfin, who spent much of her childhood in Tucson, ran the Altazor Restaurant during the day. She and and her husband, Roberto, recently opened their own restaurant, Bolero, at V. Carranza #18, just behind the Freeman Hotel in Olas Altas. It's open for lunch and dinner, with live music nightly.

Tourism began to ebb from the old town after ultramodern hotels were built to the north along Mazatlán's virgin beaches during the 1960s. Classy hotels like the Belmar on old town's Olas Altas beach fell into disrepair.

In its heyday, the Belmar drew such Hollywood stars as Clark Gable, Errol Flynn and Ava Gardner. John Wayne had a personal suite there in the 1950s, visiting when shooting several of his Westerns on the high plains to the east.

Today, the Belmar is a good choice for non-choosy travelers who want a waterfront room at $35 a night. La Siesta, two blocks away, features western-facing rooms at the same price and the corner restaurant the Shrimp Bucket, still a classic restaurant for seafood.

Down the street, the high-rise Hotel Posada Freeman reopened two years ago and offers much fancier rooms. The Freeman, originally built in 1950, had been a classic Mazatlán gathering spot. On Friday and Saturday nights, its 10th-floor El Palomar dance floor was the place to hear the latest tunes out of New York. When it was built, the Freeman was the tallest building in the entire northwest of the country. It's a great place to catch sweeping views of the downtown centro district and the Pacific Ocean.

There are still plenty of buildings that sit vacant, where you can see trees growing up in the center of old houses long ago abandoned.

However, the streets are well-lit, and one can feel safe walking from the plaza down to Olas Altas beach, where on any given evening an American ex-pat community gathers to llevelo un Pacifico ("see the Pacific") at Puerto Viejo, a small beach bar, and watch the sometimes glorious sunsets spread rich and various colors across the Mexican sky.