Mexico City, Mexico, top 10 things to do (Wimup travel guide)

▶ Video · Mexico City on Foot

Video guide · 3:10:14

▶ Watch the guide

Top 10North AmericaMexico

Top 10 Things To Do in Mexico City

Country

Mexico

Best months

Mar · Apr · Nov

Population

9.2M

Language

Spanish

Budget / day

$70–150

Quick answer

The best things to do in Mexico City are the Museo Nacional de Antropología, the Zócalo with the Rivera murals inside the Palacio Nacional, the Templo Mayor excavation beside the cathedral, the pyramids at Teotihuacán and Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Coyoacán, with a Sunday on the Xochimilco canals to close it. Four to five days is the right length: two for the historic centre, one for Chapultepec and its museums, one for Coyoacán and the south, and one for Teotihuacán. The city sits at 2,240 metres, so take the first day slowly, and use the Metro, which crosses the whole city for five pesos a ride.

Mexico City on Foot

▶ Video guide

Mexico City is built on a drained lake and on the ruins of the Mexica capital that stood in the middle of it. Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325 and razed in 1521, and the Spanish laid their own grid over the same ground, which is why the Templo Mayor sits half-excavated a hundred metres from the cathedral and why the whole centre tilts. What grew on top is one of the largest cities in the Americas, 9.2 million people inside the city limits and close to 22 million across the valley, with roughly 170 museums, a food culture that runs from a two-Michelin-starred tasting menu in Polanco to a taco stand with a star of its own, and a set of neighbourhoods (Roma, Condesa, Coyoacán, San Ángel) built at a scale you can walk. The ten entries below run from Chapultepec through the centre to the south, and the thing that shapes a day here is distance: cluster your stops by neighbourhood, take the Metro across town, and keep the traffic between three and eight in the evening out of your plans.

The 10 best things to do in Mexico City

Give a full morning to the Museo Nacional de Antropología

Museum· Av. Paseo de la Reforma s/n, Bosque de Chapultepec I Secc, Miguel Hidalgo, 11560 Mexico City

The national anthropology museum is the reason many people fly here, and it deserves the billing. Pedro Ramírez Vázquez finished it in 1964 around a courtyard whose single concrete column holds up an umbrella roof with water falling off its edges, and the ground floor runs the archaeology of Mesoamerica hall by hall: Teotihuacán, Toltec, Mexica, Oaxaca, Gulf Coast, Maya, north and west. The Mexica room holds the Sun Stone, the sixteenth-century monolith that most of the world knows as the Aztec calendar, and the Teotihuacán hall carries a full-scale reproduction of the Temple of Quetzalcóatl facade. The upper floor covers the living indigenous cultures of Mexico, which almost nobody has time for on a first visit. Go early, do the ground floor properly, and accept that you will not see all of it.

Time3 to 4 hr

CostPaid entry

Best atTuesday to Friday at opening

TipDo the Mexica and Maya halls first, before the school groups arrive

Map ↗ Website

Stand in the Zócalo and read the Rivera murals inside the Palacio Nacional

Landmark· Plaza de la Constitución s/n, Centro Histórico, Cuauhtémoc, 06000 Mexico City

The Plaza de la Constitución is one of the largest city squares in the world, a bare expanse of stone with the national flag in the middle, the Metropolitan Cathedral along the north side and the Palacio Nacional along the east. The cathedral took more than two centuries to build and is visibly sinking into the old lakebed, which is why the floor slopes and a plumb line hangs in the nave. The palace stands on the site of Moctezuma II's residence and carries Diego Rivera's staircase mural, painted between 1929 and 1935, which compresses the whole national story from Quetzalcóatl to the class struggle into one wall. Entry to the palace is free with photo identification, and access depends on official use of the building, so check before you build a morning around it.

Time2 to 3 hr

CostFree

Best atWeekday mornings

TipThe flag-lowering ceremony at dusk is worth timing an evening around

Map

Walk the Templo Mayor excavation, a hundred metres from the cathedral

Museum· Seminario 8, Centro Histórico, Cuauhtémoc, 06060 Mexico City

In 1978 electricity workers digging behind the cathedral hit a carved stone disc eight tonnes in weight showing the dismembered moon goddess Coyolxauhqui. It marked the foot of the main pyramid of Tenochtitlan, and the block above it was cleared to expose the temple the Spanish had built the colonial city over. What you walk now is a raised path across seven superimposed construction stages, since each Mexica ruler enlarged the pyramid over the last. The museum beside it holds the Coyolxauhqui stone, the monolith of Tlaltecuhtli lifted from the site in 2006, and the offerings buried under the platform. This is the single clearest demonstration of what the centre of the city is standing on.

Time2 hr

CostPaid entry

Best atLate morning

TipThe museum and the open-air site are one ticket, so leave time for both

Map ↗ Website

Climb the avenue of the dead at Teotihuacán

Archaeology· Zona Arqueológica de Teotihuacán, Carretera Ecatepec-Pirámides km 22, 55800 San Juan Teotihuacán, State of Mexico

Teotihuacán is about fifty kilometres north-east of the city and predates the Mexica by a millennium. At its height, somewhere around 400 CE, it held well over a hundred thousand people, making it one of the largest cities on earth at the time, and its builders left no writing that would tell us what they called themselves. The Mexica found it abandoned and named it the place where the gods were born. What survives is a two-kilometre ceremonial axis, the Avenue of the Dead, with the Pyramid of the Sun on one side and the Pyramid of the Moon closing the north end, plus the murals at Tepantitla and the feathered-serpent heads on the Temple of Quetzalcóatl. Climbing the two main pyramids has been restricted at times for conservation, so check the site before you go if that is the point of the trip.

TimeHalf a day to a full day

CostPaid entry at the gate

Best atAt opening

TipGo in by Gate 1 or 2, take water, a hat and cash for the entry

Map ↗ Website

Book ahead for the Casa Azul and walk the rest of Coyoacán

Museum· Londres 247, Del Carmen, Coyoacán, 04100 Mexico City

Frida Kahlo was born in this house in 1907, lived in it with Diego Rivera, and died in it in 1954. It opened as a museum four years later and it is still furnished as a home: the kitchen with its clay pots, the studio with the wheelchair at the easel, the four-poster bed with the mirror fixed above it, the corsets and the pre-Hispanic pieces Rivera collected. Tickets are timed, sold only through the museum's own site, and regularly gone weeks ahead in high season, so this is the one booking to make before you fly. Coyoacán around it is a colonial village that the city grew over rather than through: the Jardín Centenario, the Mercado de Coyoacán, and Rivera's Anahuacalli a short ride south.

Time1.5 to 2 hr

CostTimed ticket

Best atWeekday first slot

TipBuy only from the museum site, then give the afternoon to the Coyoacán market

Map ↗ Website

Take a trajinera through the Xochimilco canals

Nature· Embarcadero Nuevo Nativitas, Xochimilco, 16070 Mexico City

Xochimilco is what is left of the lake system the Mexica farmed. The chinampas, rectangular plots built up from lakebed mud between staked willow rows, are still worked, and the canals between them are still the way you cross the district. You hire a flat-bottomed trajinera by the hour at one of the official embarcaderos, with a poler who pushes it along while boats of musicians, food and flowers pull alongside. It is loud, communal and unashamedly a party on Sundays, and quiet on a weekday morning, which is when the herons and the working chinampas are visible. The whole zone has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list with the historic centre since 1987.

Time2 to 4 hr

CostBoat hire by the hour

Best atWeekday morning for calm

TipUse an official embarcadero

Map ↗ Website

Look down the length of Reforma from Chapultepec Castle

Landmark· Bosque de Chapultepec I Secc, Miguel Hidalgo, 11100 Mexico City

The castle on Chapultepec hill is the only one in the Americas to have housed actual sovereigns: Maximilian of Habsburg and Carlota lived here in the 1860s, and Paseo de la Reforma was cut through the city so that Maximilian could ride from the hill to the centre. It later served as the presidential residence until Lázaro Cárdenas gave it to the nation, and it has held the Museo Nacional de Historia since 1944, twelve permanent halls of national history plus the twenty-two rooms of the Alcázar with the imperial apartments as they were. Come for the terraces: the view runs straight down Reforma across the whole city, and the Alcázar gardens sit on the roof.

Time2 hr

CostPaid entry

Best atTuesday to Sunday, mid-morning

TipThe walk up the hill is steep, so allow fifteen minutes from the park gate

Map ↗ Website

See the Palacio de Bellas Artes for the murals, then for a performance

Landmark· Av. Juárez s/n, Centro Histórico, Cuauhtémoc, 06050 Mexico City

Porfirio Díaz commissioned a national theatre in white Carrara marble in 1904; the revolution and the sinking ground stopped the work, and it opened in 1934 with an Art Deco interior over an Art Nouveau shell. The upper floors are a mural museum, and the roll call is the argument for coming: Rivera's recreation of the Rockefeller Center mural that New York destroyed, Siqueiros, Orozco, Tamayo, all in one building. The theatre below has a stained-glass curtain made by Tiffany from close to a million pieces of glass showing the two volcanoes, and it is where the Ballet Folklórico de México performs. Buy a ticket to something if you can, because the curtain is only lowered for performances.

Time1.5 to 2 hr

CostPaid entry to the mural museum

Best atTuesday to Sunday

TipThe café on the eighth floor of the Sears building opposite has the standard photograph of the dome

Map ↗ Website

Take a Friday night at the lucha libre in Arena México

Nightlife· Dr. Lavista 189, Doctores, Cuauhtémoc, 06720 Mexico City

Lucha libre is a Mexican invention with its own rules, its own lineage of masked wrestlers, and a crowd that treats the whole thing as theatre with a scoreboard. Arena México in Colonia Doctores is its cathedral, seating around sixteen thousand, and Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre has run cards there since the 1950s. Friday night is the main event, Tuesday is the quieter card, and the seats worth having are a few rows back from the ring rather than at it. Buy a mask on the way in, follow the crowd on when to shout, and take a taxi or ride-hailing to the door: the neighbourhood is not one to wander around afterwards.

Time3 hr

CostPaid ticket

Best atFriday night

TipPhotography rules change by promoter, so ask before you bring a camera

Map

Walk up to the Basílica de Guadalupe on Tepeyac hill

Landmark· Plaza de las Américas 1, Villa de Guadalupe, Gustavo A. Madero, 07050 Mexico City

This is the most visited Catholic shrine in the world after St Peter's, and on 12 December the crowd reaches into the millions. The old basilica of 1709 tilted as the ground under it sank, so Pedro Ramírez Vázquez (the anthropology museum architect) built the new one beside it in 1976: a circular concrete tent seating around ten thousand, designed so that everyone can see the cloak. The image of the Virgin hangs behind the altar above a set of moving walkways, which keeps the queue moving past it. Behind the complex, the chapel and gardens on Tepeyac hill are the quiet part, and the climb gives you the north of the city.

Time2 hr

CostFree

Best atEarly morning

TipMetro La Villa-Basílica on Line 6 puts you two blocks from the gate

Map ↗ Website

8 of the 10, mapped

Mexico City · 8 spots

AllLandmarksMuseumsFoodFree

Mexico City travel FAQ

How many days do you need in Mexico City?+

Four to five. Two days cover the historic centre, the Zócalo, Templo Mayor, Bellas Artes and the murals. One covers Chapultepec, which means the anthropology museum and the castle. One takes Coyoacán, the Casa Azul and the south. The fifth buys Teotihuacán without rushing it, or a Sunday at Xochimilco.

Is Mexico City safe for visitors?+

The neighbourhoods most visitors spend their time in (Centro Histórico, Roma, Condesa, Polanco, Coyoacán, San Ángel) are busy and routinely walked at night, and the main risk is opportunistic theft rather than anything worse. Use ride-hailing apps or authorised taxi ranks instead of flagging cabs, keep phones out of sight on the Metro at rush hour, and check your government's travel advice for the boroughs and the states beyond the city, which it rates separately.

Does the altitude affect you?+

It can. At 2,240 metres a normal day of walking feels harder, sleep is often broken on the first night, and drink hits sooner. Give the first day a light schedule, drink more water than you think you need, and leave a strenuous climb like Teotihuacán or the Tepozteco pyramid until you have been here a couple of days.

When is the best time to visit Mexico City?+

The dry season runs from November to April and is the reliable window. March and April bring the jacarandas into flower across the whole city, which is the single best fortnight to see it. From June to September the rain arrives most afternoons, usually as a heavy couple of hours rather than a whole lost day, and mornings stay clear. The temperature barely moves across the year.

Do you need to book the Frida Kahlo Museum in advance?+

Yes. Entry to the Casa Azul is by timed ticket sold through the museum's own website, there is no reliable walk-up option, and slots regularly sell out weeks ahead in high season and around holidays. Book it as soon as your dates are fixed and plan the rest of the Coyoacán day around the time you are given.

Restaurants

Best restaurants in Mexico City

Eight kitchens, from two of the best tasting menus in Latin America to a century-old dining room off the Zócalo.

All 8 restaurants →

Polanco

Pujol

Modern Mexican, tasting menu

Enrique Olvera's dining room is the restaurant that changed how the rest of the world reads Mexican cooking. The tasting menu runs through the seasons of the country, and the mole madre is a single mother sauce that has been fed and re-cooked continuously for years, served as a ring around a fresh mole with nothing but tortillas. Reservations open well in advance and go quickly.

Map ↗ Website

Polanco

Quintonil

Modern Mexican, tasting menu

Jorge Vallejo and Alejandra Flores met working at Pujol and opened this a few streets away. It is the quieter of the two rooms and the more vegetable-driven kitchen, with a garden supplying part of the menu and dishes built around herbs, cactus and native corn. Book as far ahead as you would for Pujol.

Map ↗ Website

Roma Norte

Contramar

Seafood, lunch only

A Pacific-coast seafood house that has been the city's long lunch since 1998. Two dishes carry it: the tuna tostadas and the pescado a la talla, a whole fish split and painted red on one side with chilli and green on the other with parsley. It runs at lunchtime only, it fills by two, and the room is loud in the way a good long lunch should be.

Map

Roma Norte

Rosetta

Italian technique, Mexican produce

Elena Reygadas cooks Italian structures with Mexican ingredients in a Porfirian townhouse with a plant-filled stairwell: chaya pasta, huitlacoche in the risotto, house-made bread. She was named the world's best female chef in 2023, and her bakery a few doors along sells the guava rolls that the neighbourhood queues for.

Map

Roma Norte

Máximo

Bistro, market-led menu

Eduardo García started as a dishwasher in the United States, cooked at Pujol, and opened a small bistro that grew into one of the most reliable tables in the city. The menu is short, changes with what the Central de Abastos and the growers send, and reads French in method and Mexican in produce.

Map

Centro Histórico

El Cardenal

Traditional Mexican, breakfast

The breakfast institution of the historic centre, in a townhouse a block from the Zócalo. Order the hot chocolate whipped at the table with a molinillo, the nata with sweet bread, and whatever the seasonal chile en nogada or escamoles listing says. Weekend mornings mean a wait on the stairs.

Map

Clavería

Nicos

Mexican home cooking since 1957

A neighbourhood restaurant north of the centre that Gerardo Vázquez Lugo inherited from his parents and turned into a case for Mexican home cooking as serious food: recipes from cookbooks of the 1940s, native corn, a salsa cart, and a sopa seca that has been on the menu for decades. Worth the ride out of the tourist ring.

Map

Roma Norte

Expendio de Maíz Sin Nombre

No menu, native corn

No sign, no menu, no set price. You sit at the counter, they cook whatever came in that morning on native corn masa, and dishes keep arriving until you say stop. It is the clearest argument in the city for what heirloom corn actually tastes like, and it is a walk-in, so go early or expect to wait.

Map

Street food & markets

Best street food and markets in Mexico City

Six counters and trading floors, including the taco stand that took a Michelin star in the guide's first Mexican edition.

All 6 street food and markets →

Centro Histórico

Mercado de San Juan

Specialist produce market

The chefs' market: Spanish hams, French cheeses, game, seafood on ice and insects sold by the cup. Several stalls make sandwiches to order from what is on the counter, which is the cheapest way to eat well in the centre, and the vendors are used to explaining what things are.

Map

Merced Balbuena

Mercado de La Merced

The city's largest public market

Until the Central de Abastos opened in 1982 this was where the whole city bought its food, and it is still an overwhelming several hectares of chillies, moles, herbs, sweets and prepared food. Go in the morning, keep your bag in front of you, and eat at a stand where the queue is local.

Map

Coyoacán

Mercado de Coyoacán

Tostadas and prepared food

A neighbourhood market whose tostada counters have become a destination in their own right: crab, ceviche, pata, tinga, piled high and eaten standing. Pair it with the Casa Azul, which is a ten-minute walk away, and go before two in the afternoon.

Map

San Rafael

Taquería El Califa de León

Michelin-starred taco stand

A counter with room for a handful of people that received a Michelin star when the guide first covered Mexico in 2024, the first taco stand anywhere to do so. Four tacos on the menu, all beef, cooked on a plancha and finished with a green salsa. Expect a queue since the star, and take cash.

Map

Centro Histórico

Tacos Los Cocuyos

Late-night suadero and offal

A cauldron of simmering beef on a pavement corner near the Zócalo, open into the small hours. Suadero is the order for a first visit, with the more adventurous cuts (tripa, lengua, ojo) listed beside it. It is the standard late stop after a night in the centre.

Map

Polanco

El Turix

Yucatecan cochinita pibil

A narrow Yucatecan counter in the most expensive neighbourhood in the city, selling cochinita pibil tacos, panuchos and salbutes for a fraction of what its neighbours charge. Pork marinated in achiote and sour orange, pit-cooked, served with pickled red onion and habanero salsa. Cash only, standing room.

Map

Museums

Best museums in Mexico City

Eight more rooms beyond the top 10, from the national art collection to a house that is itself a UNESCO site.

All 8 museums →

Centro Histórico

Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL)

Mexican art, 16th century to 1954

The national art collection, in a Porfirian palace facing the equestrian statue of Charles IV that chilangos call El Caballito. It runs chronologically from the viceroyalty to the twentieth century, and the landscape rooms with José María Velasco's views of the Valley of Mexico are the reason to come.

Map ↗ Website

Plaza Carso, Granada

Museo Soumaya

Private collection, free entry

Carlos Slim's collection in a hexagon-tiled shell by Fernando Romero, holding more than sixty thousand works across thirty centuries and one of the largest Rodin holdings outside France. Entry is free, and the spiral ramp is designed to be walked from the top down.

Map ↗ Website

Granada, Polanco

Museo Jumex

Contemporary art

The most serious contemporary art programme in the country, in a sawtooth-roofed travertine building by David Chipperfield directly across the plaza from the Soumaya. The Jumex collection is one of the largest private holdings of contemporary art in Latin America, and the temporary shows are what to check before you go.

Map ↗ Website

Bosque de Chapultepec

Museo Tamayo

Modern and contemporary art

Rufino Tamayo gave his international collection to the nation and had this low concrete building put up inside Chapultepec in 1981 to hold it. Picasso, Bacon, Warhol and Tamayo himself sit alongside a changing contemporary programme, and it is a fifteen-minute walk from the anthropology museum.

Map

Bosque de Chapultepec

Museo de Arte Moderno

20th-century Mexican art

Two circular pavilions in the park, opened in 1964, holding the twentieth-century canon: Rivera, Siqueiros, Orozco, Gerzso, Varo and the Frida Kahlo painting most people are actually looking for, Las dos Fridas. The sculpture garden between the buildings is free to walk.

Map

Coyoacán

Museo Anahuacalli

Rivera's pre-Hispanic collection

Diego Rivera designed this windowless volcanic-stone pyramid to hold the roughly fifty thousand pre-Hispanic pieces he collected, and finished it as a monument as much as a museum. Mauricio Rocha added galleries in 2020. It sits on a lava field south of Coyoacán and is the quietest major museum in the city.

Map ↗ Website

Ciudad Universitaria

MUAC

University contemporary art museum

The university's contemporary museum, a Teodoro González de León building of 2008 on the UNAM campus, which is itself a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its murals and modernist planning. Combine it with the O'Gorman mosaic on the central library, which is the campus's single most photographed wall.

Map

Ampliación Daniel Garza

Casa Luis Barragán

Architect's house, UNESCO site

Barragán built his own house and studio in 1948 behind a blank grey street wall, and inside it is the clearest lesson in what he did with colour, light and stairs. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is visited by guided appointment in small groups only, so book ahead and expect the tour to be timed.

Map

Cantinas & mezcalerías

Best cantinas and mezcalerías in Mexico City

Six rooms for a drink, from a mariachi hall on Garibaldi to a cocktail bar that has spent years on the world's best lists.

All 6 cantinas and mezcalerías →

Plaza Garibaldi

Salón Tenampa

Mariachi hall, since 1925

The room that made Plaza Garibaldi the home of mariachi, opened in 1925 by a Jalisco tequila trader who brought his own musicians with him. The walls are painted with the singers who made their names here, and bands play at the tables for a fee agreed per song. Loud, touristed and still the real thing.

Map

Centro Histórico

Bar La Ópera

Cantina, since 1876

Carved mahogany, gilt ceilings and a bullet hole in the plaster that the staff will tell you Pancho Villa put there. It has been serving since 1876, it does full meals as well as drinks, and it is the most comfortable introduction to the cantina format for anyone who has never been in one.

Map

Centro Histórico

Bósforo

Mezcal, no signage

A dark, narrow room near the Alameda with an unmarked door and a list of small-batch mezcals that the staff will walk you through by region and agave rather than by brand. Order by what you want it to taste like and let them pick. Late, loud and cash-friendly.

Map

Condesa

La Clandestina

Mezcalería

A small mezcalería in Condesa built around producer relationships, pouring wild and cultivated agaves by the copita with salt and orange on the side. The staff explain provenance without ceremony, which makes it a good first stop for anyone who thinks mezcal is just smoky tequila.

Map

Roma Norte

Licorería Limantour

Cocktail bar

The bar that put Mexico City on the international cocktail map and has spent years on the World's 50 Best Bars list. The signature is the Margarita Al Pastor, built from the flavours of the taco. It is small, it does not take walk-ins easily after nine, and there is a second branch in Polanco.

Map

Centro Histórico

Cantina Tío Pepe

Cantina, 19th century

One of the oldest cantinas still working in the centre, with swing doors, a tiled floor and a clientele that has been coming for decades. Botanas arrive with the drinks in the old way, the tequila list is short and honest, and nothing about the room has been styled for visitors.

Map

Parks & gardens

Best parks and gardens in Mexico City

Five green places, from one of the largest city parks in the hemisphere to a nursery you can walk barefoot in.

All 5 parks and gardens →

Miguel Hidalgo

Bosque de Chapultepec

Four sections, museums and a lake

The city's great park and one of the largest in the Western Hemisphere, holding the anthropology museum, the castle, the modern art and Tamayo museums, a zoo, a lake and the ahuehuete cypresses that were here when it was a Mexica royal retreat. A fourth section opened as part of the Bosque de Chapultepec project, extending it west. Sunday is family day and the paths are full.

Map

Condesa

Parque México

Art Deco park, 1927

Laid out inside the oval of a former racecourse, which is why Condesa's streets curve. The park is pure 1927 Art Deco down to the lamp posts and the open-air theatre, and it is where the neighbourhood walks its dogs, runs, dances and drinks coffee. Ten minutes from Parque España, which is worth the extension.

Map

Centro Histórico

Alameda Central

The oldest public park in the Americas

Laid out in 1592, which makes it the oldest public park on the continent, and rebuilt often enough that its fountains and benches now read nineteenth century. It sits between Bellas Artes and the Diego Rivera Mural Museum, which holds the Sunday Afternoon Dream mural painted about this very park.

Map

Coyoacán

Viveros de Coyoacán

Working tree nursery and running track

A working nursery founded in 1901 that supplies trees to the city and doubles as its most pleasant running loop, with squirrels that have entirely lost their fear of people. Free, shaded, and a short walk from the Casa Azul, so it makes the natural decompression stop after the museum.

Map

Tlalpan

Bosque de Tlalpan

Volcanic scrub forest and trails

A protected forest on the lava flow in the far south, with trails through native scrub and pine and none of the manicure of the parks further north. It is where the city goes to walk properly, and the altitude plus the climb makes it a genuine workout.

Map

Neighborhoods

Best neighborhoods in Mexico City

Six quarters worth walking, from the colonial grid on the old island to a village the city grew around.

All 6 neighborhoods →

Cuauhtémoc

Centro Histórico

UNESCO World Heritage since 1987

The colonial grid laid over Tenochtitlan, and still the densest concentration of things to see in the country: the Zócalo, the cathedral, Templo Mayor, Bellas Artes, the Casa de los Azulejos, and street after street of trades sold by block. It empties in the evening outside the main axes, which is worth knowing when you plan dinner.

Map

Cuauhtémoc

Roma Norte

Porfirian townhouses, restaurants and galleries

Built for the wealthy at the turn of the twentieth century, hit hard by the 1985 earthquake, cheap for a generation afterwards and now the address for the city's restaurants, bars and galleries. Álvaro Obregón is the spine, the Plaza Río de Janeiro the set piece, and the whole neighbourhood is flat and walkable.

Map

Cuauhtémoc

Condesa

Art Deco, parks and pavement cafés

The curving streets follow a racecourse that closed in the 1920s, and the buildings around them are some of the best Art Deco in Latin America. Parque México and Parque España anchor it, Avenida Amsterdam is the loop to walk, and the pavement tables are the point.

Map

Coyoacán

Colonial village, markets and museums

Cortés based himself here while Tenochtitlan was rebuilt, and the village kept its plazas, its cobbles and its church long after the city reached it. The Casa Azul, the Trotsky house, the market and the churros at the Jardín Centenario are a full day, and weekends bring the whole city out.

Map

Álvaro Obregón

San Ángel

Cobbled streets and Saturday art market

Another colonial village absorbed by the city, quieter than Coyoacán and steeper. The Bazar del Sábado fills the Plaza San Jacinto with art and craft every Saturday, and the Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, Juan O'Gorman's pair of functionalist blocks joined by a bridge, is a short walk away.

Map

Miguel Hidalgo

Polanco

Museums, luxury retail and Michelin kitchens

The wealthy district north of Chapultepec, where Pujol, Quintonil and the Soumaya and Jumex museums sit within a few blocks of each other. Masaryk is the luxury retail street. It is the least characterful neighbourhood on this list and the one with the highest concentration of reasons to visit.

Map

Day trips

Best day trips in Mexico City

Six runs out of the valley, from a colonial city of tiled facades to a silver town built into a ravine.

All 6 day trips →

Puebla state

Puebla and Cholula

Colonial city, 2 hr by coach

A UNESCO-listed colonial centre of talavera-tiled facades, the country's great baroque interior at the Capilla del Rosario, and the birthplace of mole poblano and chiles en nogada. Cholula next door has the largest pyramid by volume in the world, with a church built on top of it. Coaches leave the TAPO terminal through the day.

Map

Morelos

Tepoztlán

Pueblo Mágico under a cliff, 1.5 hr

A market town under a wall of rock, with a sixteenth-century Dominican monastery, a weekend market full of ice cream and hand-made food, and a steep hour-long climb to the Tepozteco pyramid on the ridge above. Go on a weekday if you want the trail to yourself.

Map

Guerrero

Taxco

Silver town, 3 hr

A silver-mining town poured down the side of a ravine, all white walls, red roofs and stairs, with the rose-stone church of Santa Prisca at the top of it. Silver is still the trade and the workshops sell it by weight. The road in is winding, so it makes a long day or a better overnight.

Map

State of Mexico

Valle de Bravo

Lake town, 2.5 hr

A lakeside town in the pine hills west of the city, and the weekend address for chilangos with boats. Sailing, paragliding off the ridge and a cobbled centre of white houses with red-tiled roofs. Between November and March the monarch butterfly reserves further west are within reach of the same trip.

Map

Morelos

Cuernavaca

City of eternal spring, 1.5 hr

Nine hundred metres lower than the capital and reliably warmer, which is why the city's wealthy have kept gardens here since the viceroyalty. The Palacio de Cortés carries a Diego Rivera mural of the conquest and the Morelos revolt, and the Robert Brady house museum is the quiet surprise.

Map

Hidalgo

Tula

Toltec capital, 1.5 hr

The Toltec capital, and the site of the four basalt warrior columns known as the Atlantes standing on top of the main pyramid. It is far less visited than Teotihuacán, which is the argument for it: on a weekday you can have the ridge and its view over the valley largely to yourself.

Map

What's on

Festivals & annual events in Mexico City (2026)

Eight dates that shape the year, from an art fair in February to the pilgrimage in December.

Feb

Zona Maco

The largest contemporary art fair in Latin America, held at the Centro Citibanamex over five days in February. Galleries from across the Americas and Europe show, and the week around it turns into an open house across the city's museums, project spaces and private collections.

Mar

Festival del Centro Histórico

Two weeks of concerts, dance and theatre staged in the churches, palaces and courtyards of the historic centre, many of them buildings that are otherwise closed. The programme runs from early music to contemporary performance and a good share of it is free.

Mar

Vive Latino

The biggest rock and Latin alternative festival in the region, running since 1998 over a weekend in the Magdalena Mixhuca sports park. It draws well over a hundred thousand people across the two days and books Spanish-language headliners alongside international acts.

Mar or Apr

Semana Santa in Iztapalapa

Iztapalapa has staged a Passion play on the Cerro de la Estrella since 1843, with a cast drawn from the borough and a crowd in the hundreds of thousands walking the route on Good Friday. It is recognised as cultural heritage of Mexico City and is nothing like a tourist event.

Sep

El Grito and Independence Day

On the night of 15 September the president rings the bell of the Palacio Nacional and repeats the cry of independence to a full Zócalo, followed by fireworks. The military parade crosses the square the next morning. Book a room with a view early, because the square itself is a crush.

Oct

Formula 1 Mexico City Grand Prix

The race returned to the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in 2015 and has become one of the loudest weekends on the calendar, with the stadium section built through a former baseball ground. The 2026 running is scheduled for 30 October to 1 November, so it overlaps with Día de Muertos.

Oct and Nov

Día de Muertos and the parade

Families keep 1 and 2 November for the graveyards and the altars at home, and the city adds a Desfile de Día de Muertos that runs from Chapultepec down Paseo de la Reforma to the Zócalo on a date announced each autumn. The parade is a recent invention, first staged in 2016 after a James Bond film opened with a fictional version of it.

Dec

Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe

On 12 December several million pilgrims converge on the Basílica de Guadalupe, many walking for days and arriving through the night, with mañanitas sung to the Virgin at dawn. The roads around Tepeyac close and the Metro runs extended service. Go on any other day if you want to see the shrine itself.

Getting around

Mexico City transport & airports

Two airports on opposite sides of the valley, and a Metro ride that costs five pesos.

MEX

Benito Juárez International Airport

The busiest airport in the country, unusually close to the centre at about five kilometres east, and correspondingly congested. Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 are not walkable between: use the Aerotrén if you hold a boarding pass, or the road shuttle. Metro Line 5 stops at Terminal Aérea beside Terminal 1, and Metrobús Line 4 runs into the historic centre from both terminals for a higher flat fare than the rest of the system. Use the authorised taxi desks inside the terminal or a ride-hailing app from the designated pickup point.

Map ↗ Website

NLU

Felipe Ángeles International Airport

Opened in March 2022 on the Santa Lucía air base to take pressure off Benito Juárez, and now handling a growing share of domestic flights plus a few international routes. The catch is the distance: it sits around forty-five kilometres north of the centre in the State of Mexico, and the road transfer runs well over an hour in traffic. Check which airport your ticket uses before you book a hotel, because the two are on opposite sides of the metropolitan area.

Map ↗ Website

5 and 6 pesos

Metro and Metrobús

The Metro is the cheapest serious urban transit system anywhere, held at five pesos a ride for 2026, and it reaches almost everywhere a visitor needs to go. Metrobús, the bus rapid transit running in its own lanes down the main avenues, costs six pesos, with the exception of Line 4 to the airport terminals. Both are paid with the Tarjeta de Movilidad Integrada, a rechargeable card that also covers the Cablebús and the Tren Ligero. Avoid both at rush hour if you can, and note that the front cars of each Metro train are reserved for women and children at peak times.

Map ↗ Website

App-first

Taxis, ride-hailing and Ecobici

Ride-hailing apps are the default for visitors: fares are set in the app, the driver and route are recorded, and a cross-city trip is inexpensive. Take street taxis only from an authorised rank (sitio) rather than flagging one down. Ecobici, the city bike-share, covers the centre, Roma, Condesa, Polanco and a widening ring, works on short passes bought in the app, and is genuinely useful in the flat neighbourhoods. Traffic peaks hard between three and eight in the evening, when the Metro will beat any car.

Map ↗ Website

Traditional food

Must-try dishes in Mexico City, Mexico

Eight plates to order before you leave, most of them eaten standing up.

Tacos al pastor

Pork marinated in chilli and achiote, stacked on a vertical spit that Lebanese immigrants brought to Mexico in the twentieth century, shaved onto small corn tortillas with onion, coriander and a slice of pineapple flicked off the top of the trompo. The city's single defining plate, and best after dark.

Guajolota

A tamal inside a bread roll, sold from a stand at a Metro entrance and eaten standing up on the way to work. Carbohydrate on carbohydrate, defended without apology by everyone who grew up here, and usually washed down with atole from the same cart.

Tlacoyos

A blue-corn masa oval stuffed with beans, fava or requesón, cooked on a comal by a woman working a griddle on the pavement, then topped with nopal, salsa and crumbled cheese. Pre-Hispanic in origin and still the best cheap breakfast in the city.

Barbacoa

Lamb wrapped in maguey leaves and cooked overnight in a pit, served on a weekend morning with tortillas, salsa borracha and a cup of consomé from the bottom of the pot. Sunday food, sold out by early afternoon.

Esquites and elotes

Corn either cut into a cup or served on the cob, with mayonnaise, lime, chilli powder, salt and cheese. The cart with the steam and the whistle is a fixture outside parks and Metro exits, and the cup version is the easier one to walk with.

Quesadillas de huitlacoche

A folded masa turnover filled with corn smut, the grey fungus that grows on the ear and tastes of mushroom and earth. It comes fried or on the comal, with or without cheese, which in this city is the subject of a genuine ongoing argument.

Pozole

A hominy stew with pork or chicken, served red, white or green depending on the region, and finished at the table with shredded lettuce, radish, oregano, onion and lime. Thursday and the September independence weekend are the traditional days for it.

Churros con chocolate

Extruded dough fried to order and dipped in thick chocolate, which is the standard end to a late night. El Moro has been doing it since 1935 and keeps its original counter on Eje Central open around the clock.

Mexico City fact sheet

Mexico City at a glance

The essentials worth knowing before you go.

Country

Mexico

Region

Valley of Mexico, at 2,240 m above sea level

Population

9,209,944 in the city, about 21.8 million across the metropolitan area (2020 census)

Founded

Tenochtitlan founded in 1325, refounded as the Spanish capital in 1521

Nickname

CDMX, and the City of Palaces; residents are chilangos

Language

Spanish

Currency

Mexican peso (MXN)

Time zone

UTC-6, no daylight saving since 2022

Calling code

+52 55

Airports

Benito Juárez (MEX) and Felipe Ángeles (NLU)

Power

127V, types A and B

Emergency

911 for all services

Ideal length

4 to 5 days

Getting around

Metro, Metrobús and ride-hailing apps

Tourism board

Official site

Interesting facts

The city is built on a drained lake, and it is still sinking into it. Parts of the eastern boroughs subside by tens of centimetres a year as groundwater is pumped from the clay below, which is why the cathedral floor slopes and why buildings in the centre stand at visibly different heights to their neighbours.
At 2,240 metres, this is one of the highest large cities in the world. The air holds roughly a quarter less oxygen than at sea level, so the first day feels heavier than it should and alcohol lands faster than expected.
Roughly 170 museums operate in the city, one of the highest totals anywhere. The anthropology museum alone holds the Sun Stone, and the university campus that houses MUAC is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its own right.
The earthquakes of 19 September 1985 and 19 September 2017 fell on the same calendar date, thirty-two years apart. A national drill is now held every 19 September, and the citywide seismic alert gives the city seconds of warning from sensors on the Pacific coast.
Tacos al pastor descend from shawarma. Lebanese families who settled in Puebla in the early twentieth century brought the vertical spit with them, swapped lamb for pork and the flatbread for a tortilla, and the trompo became the emblem of the city's street food.

Headed to Mexico City?

Get our one-page Mexico City cheat sheet plus a fresh destination every Thursday. Join 38,000 travelers.