Poinsettias carpet the carefully tended gardens of Oaxaca's arch-ringed main plaza, where smoking wreckage and barricades stood just over a year ago. Local bands and marimbas have replaced the sound of explosions, and the smell of gasoline bombs and tear gas have given way to the scent of coffee and mole sauce, two of Oaxaca's specialties.

More than a year after police evicted protesters who held the city for months, visitors to Oaxaca will find a less crowded city with more local flavor than it had before the 2006 political uprising.

here are fewer tourists, more open tables at restaurants ringing the square, and a new program that closes off the streets around the main plaza to create a pedestrian mall on the weekends.

"It is really pretty. It has changed so much," said Alfredo Santiago, a businessman on vacation from a Mexico City suburb who was hanging out with his son, listening to music in the flower bedecked main square in early January. "The truth is, we wouldn't have come last year, because of the problems, but now you can even bring kids, the family."

Like many Mexicans, Santiago was horrified by television images of burning buses and violent clashes with police in the streets of Oaxaca, founded in 1529.

The city's massive green stone buildings and graceful archways are considered the archetype of a Mexican colonial-era city, drawing tourists from around the world, so seeing buildings burned or trashed came as a shock.

"It felt bad. It was like watching Oaxaca die," Santiago recalled.

"We thought, why go to Oaxaca? It looks like Iraq."

While Oaxaca state — whose capital city goes by the same name — has everything from archaeological sites, beaches and forests to cloud-shrouded mountains, it suffered from the violent images, even though the protests were largely confined to the city. But now, foreign tourists are heading back.

Jim May, 60, a professional storyteller from Harvard, Ill., was on his second trip back to Oaxaca since the disturbances — his fifth or sixth trip to Oaxaca overall.

"I think that what I would tell people is that it's safe," said May.

"There is some volatility in the political situation, but there is everywhere in the world."