Mexico City is one of the most fascinating and layered capitals in the world — a place where ancient Aztec ruins sit beneath vast cathedrals, and revolutionary murals share walls with Art Deco grandeur. We arrived in early 2023, still in the long tail of the pandemic, but found a city confidently rebounding — full of green parks, bustling markets, world-class food, and some of the finest museums in Latin America. Over several days, we explored both the colonial heart and the creative barrios, delving into the lives of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and taking a day trip to the vast archaeological site of Teotihuacán. This is a city that rewards curiosity and takes its time to reveal itself.

A City That Sits High and Lives Deep

At 2,200 metres above sea level, Mexico City doesn’t quite reach the heights of Cusco or La Paz, but it’s high enough to have a physiological effect. For me, the change was visible — my Fitbit showed a spike in resting heart rate for the first 48 hours, despite no strenuous activity. When I later mentioned this to my doctor, he was fascinated. The medical profession understands this phenomenon theoretically, but rarely gets personal, real-time data from travellers. A subtle reminder to take things slow when arriving from sea level — your body needs time to adjust.

Zócolo; Palacio Nacional; Catedral Metropolitana; Templo Mayor; Alameda Central, Mexico City

Mexico City: Sites

Markets, Green Retreats, and Bohemian Corners

We began our stay near the Mercado de San Juan Ernesto Pugibet, a working local food market where colourful fruit and vegetables were being stacked for the day. Like so many markets across Latin America, it was more than functional, it was sociable and full of life. From there, we gradually explored outward on foot.

One of our favourite stretches was Avenida Francisco I. Madero, a lively pedestrianised street linking the Torre Latinoamericana with the Zócalo. It’s not just about shops and street performers, it passes some of the city’s most important colonial buildings, including the Templo de San Francisco, one of many gold-laden Franciscan churches we’ve seen across Latin America. The church marks the site of the first major Christian temple built after the conquest, its architecture, layers of chapels, and domed altars speak to centuries of religious and political transformation. The next-door gardens to the Templo often feature open air art exhibitions — there were a number of interesting sculptures on our visit. In addition to the churches the Casa de loa Azueljos which dates from 1596 and the spectacular tiles that cover the outside walls were shipped from China in the early 19th century.

The street even played a cameo in the James Bond film Spectre (2015), which opens with a dramatic Day of the Dead parade through the Zócalo and onto Madero, though the real parade didn’t exist until inspired by the film! The spectacular Palacio Postal, with its grand ornate staircase also featured in the opening scenes of the film.

Alameda Central, just to the west, is one of the oldest parks in the Americas, a patchwork of green shade, open benches, fountains, and sculpture. And further out lie two of the city’s most distinctive neighbourhoods: Roma and La Condesa.

• Roma feels like a younger, rawer district, full of small galleries, food experiments, and start-ups.
• La Condesa is elegant and relaxed, with leafy boulevards, Art Deco architecture, and weekend dog adoption fairs in Parque México — complete with paperwork, volunteers, and wagging tails.

Both neighbourhoods are lined with public green space, a defining trait of the capital. Even in the historic core, you’re rarely far from a shaded plaza or garden square. Many are beautifully curated: poinsettias planted outdoors in perfect rows caught my eye — the first time I’d ever seen them outside of their usual Christmas setting in northern Europe. That attention to planting gives the city a surprisingly green feel, balancing its sprawl with a sense of calm and care.

The Zócalo: Empire Above Empire

At the centre of Mexico City lies the Zócalo, one of the largest public squares in the world — covering roughly 46,800 square metres (that’s twice the size of St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican). It was once the sacred plaza of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, and today it’s framed by institutions of overwhelming power: the Palacio Nacional, the Catedral Metropolitana, and the city government.

The Cathedral is enormous, the largest in Latin America, and among the biggest anywhere. Construction began in 1573, using stones pulled directly from the ruins of the Aztec Templo Mayor nearby. The building took more than two centuries to complete, fusing Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical styles and it’s still moving. The soft lakebed beneath it has caused subsidence, and major efforts are ongoing to stabilise the structure.

Behind it, you can walk among the excavated stones of the Templo Mayor, where sacrificial platforms and serpent heads rise again into view. The colonial metaphor becomes literal: one empire literally built upon another.

The Aztecs: Inheritors and Mythmakers
Known properly as the Mexica, the Aztecs rose to power in the 14th century, ruling much of Central Mexico by the time the Spanish arrived. Their capital, Tenochtitlán, was a marvel — a planned city with canals, pyramids, and raised causeways. They viewed earlier civilisations like Teotihuacán with reverence and built their own temples upon similar plans. After the conquest, much of their world was buried — but never entirely lost.

Palacio de Bellas Artes: Murals, Music, and Censorship

West of the Zócalo, just beside Alameda Park, stands the white marble Palacio de Bellas Artes, unmistakable with its green and orange tiled dome. From the outside, it feels like a palace from another world. Inside, it becomes even more powerful.

The main performance hall hosts orchestras, operas, and ballet, but it’s the murals upstairs that hold the soul of the building. Most famously, Diego Rivera’s Man, Controller of the Universe dominates the upper gallery. Originally painted for the Rockefeller Center in New York, the mural was destroyed after Rivera refused to remove the image of Lenin. The mural also contains images of working men together with Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and Leon Trotsky as well as God and Capitalists of the time, reflecting the deep intellectual and philosophical debates of the time. He recreated it here in Mexico City, adding new layers of ideological tension. Rivera’s four-part Carnival of Mexican Life is also worth looking out for.

Alongside Rivera are works by José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, each mural bursting with movement, workers, revolution, and conflict, capturing Mexico’s post-revolutionary hopes and anxieties.

Diego Rivera: Art, Politics, and the People
Rivera (1886–1957) transformed public art. His murals championed the working class, Indigenous history, and Marxist ideology, often in spaces ironically funded by capitalists. He was a contradiction, and he embraced it. His influence still defines how Mexico sees itself — in colour, in struggle, and in celebration.

Frida Khalo’s Casa Azul; Diego Rivera’s Man, Controller of the Universe; Art Deco Interior of Palacio de Bellas Artes; Santa Hoja Coffee Shop Coyoacán, Mexico City

Frida Kahlo: Private Pain, Public Persona

South in the quiet district of Coyoacán, the bright blue walls of Casa Azul mark the house where Frida Kahlo was born, lived, and died. Inside, her life comes into focus, not as a myth, but as a woman navigating physical pain, political turmoil, and personal love.

At 18, Kahlo suffered a devastating bus accident, a broken spine, shattered pelvis, and years of operations. Her paintings became a mirror of that pain. In The Broken Column, she depicts herself torn open, her spine replaced by a cracked classical pillar.

Her relationship with Rivera was equally complicated, intense, political, unstable. They married, divorced, and remarried, often living apart but rarely detached. In the US, while Rivera worked on murals, Kahlo increasingly found her own voice, painting with defiance, Mexican identity, and emotional depth.

Her works grew darker: The Two Fridas explores fractured identity; Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair confronts gender expectations and rejection. Even her painted plaster corsets, worn daily, became canvases of resistance.

Note: Tickets must be purchased online in advance — there are no walk-up sales.

Frida Kahlo: Painting Pain into Power
Kahlo (1907–1954) turned suffering into symbol. A communist, feminist, and national icon, her self-portraits are brutally honest and unflinchingly Mexican. She wore traditional dress, challenged beauty norms, and made her private injuries into universal art. Casa Azul isn’t just a museum — it’s a shrine, a studio, and a storybook in one.

Museo Nacional de Antropología: Storytelling Through Space

Mexico’s best museum, and one of the world’s finest, is the Museo Nacional de Antropología, set in the vast Bosque de Chapultepec Park. Rather than present history as a straight line, it gives each major civilisation its own space: Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, Teotihuacán, Mexica (Aztec) and others all have individual pavilions designed to evoke their world.

The Aztec Sun Stone, Olmec colossal heads, and Maya glyphs are all here. But beyond the artefacts, the museum excels at storytelling through environment, with reconstructions of temples, tombs, and even city models.

It’s best to focus on two or three cultures in a visit; otherwise, the scope is overwhelming. We spent much of our time in the Teotihuacán and Mexica sections, both of which added rich context to sites we later visited.

Museo Nacional de Antropología and La Condesa, Mexico City

Mexico City: Context

Where We Stayed

KALI Centro, Mexico City, a clean, quiet, and well-equipped hotel perfectly placed between the historic centre and the more atmospheric neighbourhoods of Roma and Condesa. Excellent value and walking distance from many central attractions.

Where We Ate

Mexico City has one of the best dining scenes in Latin America, global, creative, and deeply rooted in tradition. We tried everything from backstreet taquerías to rooftop mezcalerías, but two places stood out for their contrast:

• Sonora Grill — An upscale, modern steakhouse in the CBD. Polished service, premium meat, and a cosmopolitan vibe.
• Santa Hoja — A stylish vegetarian café near Casa Azul in Coyoacán, perfect for breakfast or a quiet coffee in the garden.

Between them lies an entire city of flavour.

Getting Around

Traffic, like many big cities can be challenging, especially in rush hours, however there are a number of practical options for getting round the city easily.

• Metro: Fast, efficient, and extremely cheap (MXN 10 flat fare). Women-only carriages are well marked.
• Uber: Cheap, reliable, and widely used, remember to tip your driver for as visitors it is particularly cheap and also safe.
• Bus terminals: We used TAPO to reach Puebla, modern, secure, and easy to navigate.

Teotihuacán: Stone, Space, and the City of the Gods

We joined a day tour with Wayak, which included stops at the Shrine of Guadalupe, still a site of pilgrimage and syncretic devotion, and the Tlatelolco ruins, where colonial churches and modern tragedy (the 1968 massacre) now overlay an ancient Aztec marketplace.

Then came Teotihuacán, and it’s hard to overstate the scale. The site stretches over 20 square kilometres, with the grand Calzada de los Muertos — a 2 km ceremonial avenue — linking the massive Pyramid of the Moon with the even taller Pyramid of the Sun, which rises to around 66 metres. Even from the ground, the pyramids are breathtaking — symmetrical, monumental, and aligned to celestial events.

Nearby, the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl is smaller but rich in carved façades and serpents, many of which have been reconstructed.  Unlike the pyramids of the sun and moon, this structure can be climbed.

One caveat: like many tours, ours included an unnecessary time-consuming stop to a souvenir shop before reaching the site. While our guide was excellent, this felt like time that could have been better spent on site.

Teotihuacán: City of the Gods
Flourishing between 100 BCE and 750 CE, Teotihuacán was one of the largest cities in the world at its peak, with an estimated population of over 100,000. Its origins are still debated, but its influence shaped Mesoamerican culture for centuries. Later peoples, including the Aztecs, revered it as sacred. Its decline remains a mystery, abandoned long before the Spanish ever arrived.

Pyramid of the Sun; Pyramid of the Moon; Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl, Teotihuacán

COVID Context: Quiet Caution

When we visited in early 2023, COVID protocols were still widely observed. Masks were worn indoors and often outside, especially in markets, transport, and government buildings. No rules were enforced, but the culture of caution remained. Like our trip to Colombia in 2022, Mexico’s approach felt closer to Europe than to the US, disciplined but not fearful. Tourism had returned, especially domestic travel, and most venues were operating as normal.

From Mexico City we left the megalopolis for the more cerebral city of Puebla

Dates Visited: 11^th to 17^th January 2023