A Smile as a Guide to Mexico City

Low season: from May to September (rainy season)

 

“If you like, I can give you a few tips for the days you’ll be spending here in Mexico City,” the Mexican woman says, smiling, in fluent English.

“Don’t worry, I already know what I want to see,” replies the young American, broad-shouldered, with an athlete’s grin. She looks down at her cocktail. He goes back to his iPhone.

It is a conversation overheard at a bar in Roma, a district where gentrification has advanced fast: rents and living costs have risen, menus are in English, and long-time residents are increasingly resentful.

Mexico City’s metropolitan area is home to roughly 20 million people – more than five times the population of Berlin. Anyone with only a few days here must choose, knowing most of the city will remain unseen. What would the smiling woman have suggested, had she been allowed to reply? Probably a route away from the standard tourist checklist – Frida Kahlo Museum (Casa Azul), the Angel of Independence, the Museum of Anthropology – and away from the selfie trail.

She would almost certainly have begun in the historic centre, where Tenochtitlan once stood, capital of the Aztec empire, and where Hernán Cortés first met Moctezuma II. Built on a lagoon, the city reminded the Spaniards who arrived in 1519 of Venice. Today that meeting point of civilisations is the vast Zócalo, framed by the Spanish cathedral and the seat of government. Now that the water has nearly vanished beneath roads and buildings, it is hard to imagine the old city of temples, canals and causeways. Yet the past has not disappeared. It survives in the food, in the language; it “seeps back like damp on the walls”, as photographer Pablo Ortiz put it. It resurfaces beyond the cathedral in the Templo Mayor Museum, destroyed by the Spaniards when they built the capital of New Spain over the Aztec one.

Celebration of the 215th anniversary of the beginning of Mexico’s independence held in the Zócalo of Mexico City by Octavio Hoyos

Up to this point, we are still within TripAdvisor territory. The smiling woman would probably have advised going against the flow and heading north rather than towards the Palacio de Bellas Artes. The historic centre does not really require a plan: going there is the plan. It is a place for wandering, for getting lost among religious images, cheap trinkets, volcanic-stone façades and the churn of tourists and locals, until you reach the square by Santo Domingo. From there, it is a short walk to the Museum of Muralism. In its cool courtyards, sheltered from the city’s heat and noise, visitors move through floors covered with Diego Rivera murals: didactic, ideological, at times openly violent. Dead capitalists with pig-like faces, armed revolutionaries with grave expressions. They belong to the post-revolutionary decades of the early twentieth century, when Mexico experienced an artistic flowering that made muralism one of its defining languages. Afterwards, the smiling woman might have proposed lunch at Xaachila, which serves regional Oaxacan cuisine. The queue is long, but worth it for a table outside, amid the flow of the street, facing the baroque church of the Santísima Trinidad.

She would then have suggested escaping the frenzy and heading south to the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM. At seven square kilometres, it is the size of a small town. Built in the 1950s by more than 60 architects, engineers and artists, it was conceived as a place where pre-Hispanic culture and twentieth-century modernism could coexist.

On Fridays, students lead free tours explaining how the campus became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007. Today it is one of Latin America’s most prestigious universities, with around 250,000 students. The central library, wrapped in Juan O’Gorman’s mosaic on the history of Mexico, is one of the city’s great visual statements: conquest, religion, cosmology and indigenous symbolism compressed into four monumental façades. But UNAM is not only monumental. It works as a public space. Cyclists move along dedicated lanes, students picnic on the grass, someone smokes weed in the shade, someone else strums a guitar, and on the façade of the faculty of letters hangs a large Palestinian banner. The campus has movement without frenzy, scale without intimidation. On weekends, the Sala Nezahualcóyotl hosts classical concerts.

Iconic building of the Central Library in the National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM by Leon Rafael

The smiling woman would not have forgotten Chapultepec, the city’s largest green space. She would have advised a bicycle ride to the Cárcamo de los Dolores, home to one of Diego Rivera’s strangest works: an underwater mural and a sculpture dedicated to Tlaloc, god of water. Then perhaps a cocktail and lunch at LagoAlgo, overlooking the lake. Standard itineraries insist on Chapultepec Castle, and rightly so. But she would also have suggested seeing the park from above, taking the Cablebús from Los Pinos.

On the final day, the two of them, both in trainers, would have climbed Cerro de la Estrella, an easy ascent with a sweeping view across the capital. From there she would have pointed out the Torre Latinoamericana in the centre, the towers of Santa Fe, and, to the south, the ecological reserve of Xochimilco, where the city still preserves traces of its lacustrine past in the chinampas, the floating gardens first engineered by the Aztecs.

Aerial hyperlapse of Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City by ArgelisRebolledo

Tourist trajineras at the Fernando Celada pier and Xochimilco canals by Octavio Hoyos

In the afternoon they would have gone to Coyoacán. In the main square, she might have led the square-jawed American past the crowds and into quieter corners: the shaded cloister by the church, the smaller streets nearby, the local theatre on Calle Moctezuma where performances based on traditional legends are staged. For dinner, the choice would have been between Casa de los Tacos, with its insect-based pre-Hispanic dishes, and the more traditional Tacos de la Cruz, where menu items bear infernal names such as el gordo pecador and el exorcista.

Then the departure day would have arrived. With some regret, she might have said that she had wanted to take him to Mama Rumba in Roma for salsa dancing to live music, and to the Plaza of the Three Cultures in Tlatelolco, where Aztec ruins, colonial architecture and Mexican modernism stand side by side, and where the student movement of 1968 was crushed. A weathered plaque there reads: 13 August 1521 / heroically defended by Cuauhtémoc / Tlatelolco fell into the hands of Hernán Cortés / It was neither victory nor defeat / It was the painful birth of the mestizo people / that is Mexico today. Painful, too, was the birth of Latin America.

Plaza de las Tres Culturas by Diego Grandi

“Perhaps I’ll come back in spring,” he would have said, a flicker of curiosity finally kindled by this chaotic, polluted, vibrant megalopolis, where history piles up so densely it can make your head spin.

That is what might have happened, if the gringo had been a little curious. Instead, in that bar in Roma, he was staring at his iPhone.

Getting there

British tourists travelling to Mexico do not require a visa for short stays. There are direct flights from London Heathrow to Mexico City, operated by Aeroméxico and British Airways. In addition, several UK airports offer direct connections to the Caribbean resort destination of Cancún, with services operated by TUI Airways, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. At Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City, visitors can usually find reasonably good exchange rates at the airport’s currency exchange counters.

Places to stay

For those wishing to stay in the northern part of the city, Roma is a particularly good choice, known for its lively atmosphere, restaurants and nightlife. Further south, Del Valle, Narvarte and Coyoacán are all excellent areas, offering a pleasant environment and good access to other parts of the city. The area is well connected by metro, although some parts may not be the best choice if you are concerned about safety at night. In addition to the main international hotel chains and national hotels, there is also a wide selection of accommodation available through Airbnb and Booking.com.

How to get around

Getting around the city can be something of an odyssey: according to the TomTom Traffic Index, Mexico City ranked as one the most congested cities in the world in 2025. Taxis are inexpensive, widely available, generally safe, and remain one of the simplest ways to move around the city. Visitors can also rely on the main private transport apps. Among them, InDrive is often recommended, as it is widely regarded as the platform that charges drivers the lowest commission; payment is usually made in cash. Public transport is extremely inexpensive and includes a broad range of options. The Metro, Metrobús and Trolleybus are relatively efficient and cover large parts of the city. The small private minibuses known as “peseros” are also extremely common. They usually operate on a cash-only basis and can be rather uncomfortable, but they are generally safe and offer a highly authentic local experience. For shorter journeys, Ecobici, the public bike-sharing system, can also be a practical option, particularly on Sundays, when major roads are closed to cars. The service requires users to download the corresponding app.