Where To Go in Mexico City
27 places across 9 categories — the landmarks on the postcards, the observation decks, the museums, the parks, and the neighborhoods where the city actually lives.
Landmarks
TODO — what landmarks in Mexico City are actually worth the time.
The Zócalo and the Cathedral
One of the largest squares in the world, laid out on the ceremonial centre of Tenochtitlan, with a cathedral built from its stones.
Palacio de Bellas Artes
An Art Nouveau exterior around an Art Deco interior, with murals by Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros and a Tiffany glass curtain.
Castillo de Chapultepec
The only royal castle in the Americas, on a hill that was sacred to the Aztecs, holding the national history museum.
Torre Latinoamericana
A 1956 skyscraper on the soft bed of a drained lake in an earthquake zone, which is still standing because of how it was built.
Basílica de Guadalupe
The most visited Catholic shrine in the world after St Peter's, holding a cloak that around twenty million pilgrims a year come to see.
Museums
TODO — what museums in Mexico City are actually worth the time.
Museo Nacional de Antropología
One of the great museums of the world, holding the Aztec Sun Stone and the whole of Mesoamerica, under a concrete umbrella.
Museo Frida Kahlo
The blue house in Coyoacán where she was born, lived with Rivera, and died, kept as it was left.
Museo del Templo Mayor
The Aztec great temple, found by electricity workers in 1978 under the corner of the Zócalo, excavated and left open.
Museo Soumaya and Museo Jumex
A silver-scaled asymmetric tower built by the richest man in Latin America, free to enter, next door to a serious contemporary gallery.
Museo de Arte Popular
Mexican folk art in an Art Deco fire station — alebrijes, Tree of Life candelabra, textiles and skeletons.
History
TODO — what history in Mexico City are actually worth the time.
Palacio Nacional and the Rivera Murals
Diego Rivera's history of Mexico, painted across a staircase over sixteen years, in the building where the president works.
Plaza de las Tres Culturas
An Aztec temple, a colonial church and a modernist housing block around one square, and a massacre in 1968 that the state denied for decades.
Casa Luis Barragán
The house of Mexico's greatest modern architect, kept exactly as he left it, and visitable only by booked tour.
Parks & Outdoors
TODO — what parks & outdoors in Mexico City are actually worth the time.
Bosque de Chapultepec
Twice the size of Central Park, holding the castle, the anthropology museum, a zoo and several million weekend visitors.
Xochimilco
The last surviving canals and floating gardens of the Aztec lake system, worked since before the conquest and now full of painted boats.
Viveros de Coyoacán
A working tree nursery that is also the city's favourite running track, full of squirrels and eucalyptus.
Food & Drink
TODO — what food & drink in Mexico City are actually worth the time.
Tacos al Pastor
Pork on a vertical spit with a pineapple on top — a Lebanese method, a Mexican result, and the best thing to eat in the city.
Mercado de San Juan
The city's gourmet market, where chefs buy and where you can eat crocodile, ant larvae and very good cheese at the same counter.
Pulquerías and Cantinas
A fermented agave drink that predates the conquest, and the century-old bars where the city still drinks it.
Culture & Music
TODO — what culture & music in Mexico City are actually worth the time.
Lucha Libre at Arena México
Masked wrestling as national theatre, in a purpose-built arena, with a crowd that is half the show.
Día de Muertos
Altars, marigolds and a parade through the middle of the city that was invented for a James Bond film and then became real.
Shopping
TODO — what shopping in Mexico City are actually worth the time.
Day Trips
TODO — what day trips in Mexico City are actually worth the time.
Teotihuacán
A city of over 100,000 people that was already a thousand years abandoned when the Aztecs found it and named it the place where gods were born.
Puebla
A colonial city of tiled façades two hours east, where mole poblano was invented and Talavera has been fired since 1580.
Neighbourhoods
TODO — what each part of Mexico City is like to walk around, and who lives there.
Coyoacán
A colonial village absorbed by the city, with cobbled streets, two squares, Frida Kahlo's house and the best tostadas in Mexico.
Roma and Condesa
Two adjoining early-twentieth-century districts of Art Deco and Porfirian villas, now the best eating and walking in the city.