Ciudad de México (CDMX)
Mexico City is not the place most visitors have been warned about. Read more
The single most concentrated place in Mexico to grasp how three civilizations were stacked on one spot. Also the country's living political stage.
Rivera's greatest mural cycle, free, in the building where the country is actually governed.
A street shaped like a racetrack because it was one, lined with the best Art Deco housing stock in Mexico.
250 years of shifting architectural fashion in one building, sinking into an Aztec lake, built from an Aztec temple.
The only vantage point that makes the scale of the city legible, right on top of the Centro's best buildings.
The Mexica capital, physically under the Spanish one, found by accident in 1978. The context that makes the rest of the Centro make sense.
The house Frida Kahlo was born and died in, preserved as it was — including the mirrored bed and her sealed-away wardrobe.
The Sun Stone, Pakal's jade mask, and the Olmec heads under one roof — the single best museum in Latin America.
The first functionalist buildings in Mexico, and Rivera's studio left as he had it — with none of the Casa Azul's booking problem.
The best mural room in Mexico, including the Rivera that Rockefeller destroyed and Rivera then repainted out of spite.
Trotsky's study, preserved to the day he was killed in it, four blocks from Frida Kahlo's house. Cheap and never crowded.
An actual imperial palace with Maximilian's rooms intact, and the view straight down Reforma from the terrace.
A real working market with a Caribbean and Central American accent, three blocks from Roma's most expensive restaurants.
The best tostadas in Mexico City, piled ridiculously high, eaten standing at a market counter for a few dollars.
The best craft market in the country, running every Saturday since 1960 — juried ceramics and textiles inside, painters selling in the plaza outside.
The Art Deco park built inside a demolished racetrack, and the best-used public space in the city.
The living centre of a colonial village inside a megacity — best on a weekend, when both plazas turn into a fairground.
The green core of the city and the container for its best museums — a Mexica sacred grove you can still walk through.
Michelin-listed suadero tacos for about 25 pesos each, served until dawn, standing up.
A dining room preserved intact since 1912, with mole enchiladas and clay-pot coffee to justify sitting in it.
The best traditional breakfast in the city, with hot chocolate frothed at the table and cream from the family's own dairy.
Pit-cooked Hidalgo lamb barbacoa, three days a week, and the consommé that comes with it. The best in the city.
The tuna tostada and the half-red half-green pescado a la talla — two dishes that reshaped how Mexico eats seafood.
The best tacos de guisado in the city, on the same corner since 1968, for about 30 pesos each.
The mole madre: a sauce simmering continuously since 2013, served as a ring inside a ring, with one tortilla.
One Michelin star for cooking that traces the real routes between India, East Africa and Mexico — and makes an argument while it does it.
Italian technique on Mexican produce, from one of the country's best chefs, in a glass-roofed courtyard full of plants.
Heirloom maize nixtamalized on site, which makes these the best tortillas in the city — everything else is built on them.
Two Michelin stars, near the top of the World's 50 Best, and materially easier to book than Pujol.
The guava-and-cheese roll, and the cardamom roll that's quietly better. Get there at opening or take it away.
Seventy years of the same counter, the same cinnamon cappuccino, and a queue of the entire neighborhood on the pavement outside.
An intact 1895 cantina with a Pancho Villa bullet hole in the ceiling and a string trio in the corner.
Fifty-plus artisanal mezcals, honestly priced, with bartenders who will actually teach you the difference. Come before 9pm.
The bar that started the city's cocktail scene, still on the North America 50 Best list, and the Margarita al Pastor.
A thirty-seat bar from the Limantour team that keeps landing on North America's 50 Best list. Sit at the bar, go early.
The World's Best Bar, in a basement behind an unmarked door, doing technically extreme drinks with no theatre.
The highest-ranked bar in Mexico, doing Italian aperitivo with total restraint. Go at 6pm and have two.
A real speakeasy — password, taquería front, fridge door — with genuinely excellent classic bartending behind it.
