A Sunday flea market of several thousand stalls, selling antiques, furniture, records, junk and stolen property.
La Lagunilla has been a market since before the conquest — it stood on the edge of Tlatelolco’s great market and has traded continuously since.
It is now two things: three permanent halls open daily, and an enormous Sunday tianguis of several thousand stalls that spreads across the surrounding streets.
Sunday
The flea market runs from about nine in the morning to four in the afternoon, and it is one of the great markets of Latin America.
Antiques and collectibles — the section around Paseo de la Reforma and Rayón is where the serious dealers are. Furniture, religious art, colonial silver, clocks, cameras, coins, medals, watches, glass, radios, typewriters and militaria.
Vinyl and books, in quantity.
Lucha libre masks, film posters, Mexican comics, and a great deal of twentieth-century Mexican ephemera.
Clothing, vintage and otherwise. Furniture, some of it genuinely good mid-century.
And a very large volume of straightforward junk.
The reputation
Two things are true.
It is one of the most enjoyable places in Mexico City on a Sunday morning, full of families, mariachis, food stalls and people arguing cheerfully over prices.
It also has a long-standing reputation as a market where stolen goods are sold, and a serious pickpocketing problem. Both are well documented and neither is exaggerated.
Practical precautions: front pockets only, no watch, no visible phone, a small amount of cash, and nothing worth taking. Go in the morning when it is busy rather than at the end of the day. Do not take a bag that hangs behind you.
Most visitors have an entirely uneventful time. The precautions are the reason.
The permanent halls
Open daily and much calmer.
Furniture in one, clothing and fabric in another, food in the third — the food hall has an excellent and unglamorous selection of stalls doing quesadillas, carnitas and consomé.
Buying
Bargaining is expected and enjoyed here, unlike at La Ciudadela. Start at half, settle around two-thirds, do it with humour.
Provenance is not a concept. Assume nothing about the age or origin of anything, buy because you like the object, and be aware that Mexico restricts the export of archaeological material and certain colonial religious art — genuine pre-Hispanic artefacts cannot legally be taken out of the country.
Practicalities
Sunday for the flea market; the halls are daily.
Cash only for practical purposes.
Allende or Lagunilla metro. Uber out rather than walking far afterwards.
