Things to do — Mexico City

Mexico City offers a density of cultural experience that rivals the great capitals of the world — and a diversity that takes multiple trips to even begin to cover.

The Centro Histórico is the city's Aztec and colonial heart. The Zócalo (Plaza de la Constitución), one of the largest public squares on earth, is framed by the Metropolitan Cathedral (built across 240 years, from 1573 to 1813), the Palacio Nacional and the Palacio del Ayuntamiento. The Templo Mayor, the great pyramid of Tenochtitlán uncovered by accident in 1978 during electrical works, is now an open-air archaeological dig two blocks from the Zócalo, paired with an excellent on-site museum. Diego Rivera's murals at the Palacio Nacional (free entry) are not to be missed: 1,200 square meters of Mexican history painted between 1929 and 1951, a monumental and politically charged work.

The Museo Nacional de Antropología in Chapultepec is one of the largest and most important archaeological museums in the world: 23 halls across two floors, dedicated to Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Zapotec, Mixtec and twenty other pre-Hispanic civilizations. The Aztec hall alone — with the Sun Stone (Calendario Azteca), feathered ornaments of the rain god Tláloc, and the Moctezuma room — deserves a half-day. Chapultepec Park itself, at 686 hectares, is the largest urban park in the Americas and contains five other museums.

The Coyoacán neighborhood is the other essential anchor. The Casa Azul of Frida Kahlo — her birthplace and studio, preserved as she left them — is one of the most-visited and most affecting museums in Mexico: her collection of tehuana dresses, her brushes, her wheelchair and her self-portraits create an almost tangible presence. A 15-minute walk away, the Coyoacán market is the right place to try tlayudas, enchiladas and atoles. The Roma and Condesa neighborhoods are contemporary Mexico: independent coffee shops, creative Mexican kitchens, bookstores, art galleries and 1920s–30s modernist architecture set among tree-lined sidewalks and shaded parks.

The day trip to Teotihuacán (50 km, one hour by bus from the Terminal Norte) is the experience that lodges deepest in most visitors' memory: the Pyramid of the Sun (65 m, the third-largest pyramid in the world) and the Pyramid of the Moon (43 m) frame the Avenue of the Dead — a city of 150,000 inhabitants in the 1st century CE. Arrive at opening (8 a.m.) to climb the pyramids before the heat and the crowds.