The capital of Mexico is a metropolis in a verdant valley surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. But many years ago it was settled by the Aztecs and then by the Spanish, who influenced the formation of the local culture. Thanks to them we can see many of Mexico City’s sights, such as ancient pyramids, baroque palaces and temples.
A special atmosphere reigns during the holidays in the main square and the long avenue, when locals walk around in brightly colored outfits, paying tribute to the past. I tell you where to go and what to see in Mexico City to get to know the capital in different eras of its formation.
Palace of Fine Arts
The main attraction of Mexico City is a huge palace in the center of the city. It was built in the early twentieth century from Carrara marble. The exterior of the building reflects several styles at once: Art Nouveau, Baroque and Art Deco. The facade is decorated with a colonnade, bas-reliefs and bright yellow-orange domes, which are hard to miss when walking around the historic center.
Inside there are several concert halls where opera and ballet performances performed by Mexican artists are shown. The interior of the palace is equally luxurious, with wall paintings, frescoes, wood and marble finishes. The main hall has a stained glass ceiling depicting Apollo and the nine muses, as well as a large glass curtain made up of a million pieces of opal glass.
You can visit the Museo de Arquitectura exhibition for 65 Mexican pesos and see a collection of murals by Diego Rivera and other artists at the National Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts for 90 Mexican pesos.
They are open Tuesday through Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00. You can find a schedule of events on the attraction’s website. You can also stroll through the Alameda Central Park adjacent to the palace, which is like a real oasis in the center of the city.
Post Palace
Next to the Palace of Fine Arts is another impressive landmark of Mexico City – the twentieth-century Postal Palace. It is a luxurious structure that combines several architectural styles – even the windows of each floor are made differently: Spanish Rococo, Plateresque, Venetian Gothic, Classicism, Moorish style and Art Nouveau. The facade of the building is decorated with numerous bas-reliefs, sculptures and other elements.
Above the stair hall is a glass dome that lets daylight into the palace, illuminating the already colorful interior.
The interior of the palace is even more lavish and luxurious: in the richly decorated halls you will see marble and gold trim, stucco, and spiral staircases. Visitors are no less attracted by the ornate decorations than by the paintings made of stamps in the central hall.
Mexico’s main post office is still here, so you can send your loved ones an unusual souvenir straight from your trip, such as a letter or postcard. Many people also buy postage stamps as keepsakes.
The palace is open Tuesday through Sunday from 8:00 to 16:00. But on Saturday it closes earlier – at 12:00.
Templo Major
The open-air museum offers a look at the ruins of two ancient pyramids from the early 14th century – Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli, which remain from the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. Once the structures reached 60 meters in length and served as an important religious center. Here the gods were worshipped and sacrifices were made in their honor.
On the territory there is a museum with interesting artifacts found during excavations. It contains ancient knives, masks, sculptures and other objects. There is also a hall of rituals and sacrifices with exhibits about funeral traditions and offerings.
The grounds are open to the public Tuesday through Sunday from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. Admission costs 95 Mexican pesos.
Constitution Square
Another name for this place is Socalo. Mexico City’s main square is the largest in Latin America and one of the largest in the world. It occupies more than 46,000 square meters of the city center, which is comparable to six soccer fields. Many demonstrations, art performances, military parades, festivals and processions are held here.
A huge national flag flies in the center of the square, and surrounding it are Mexico City’s main landmarks, including the National Palace and the Cathedral.
National Palace
This long, three-story 16th-century building sprawls 200 meters across Mexico’s main square, El Socalo. The National Palace, with its spacious courtyards and fountains, is made of volcanic rock in the classic Spanish Baroque style. On both sides of the facade are towers, and above the main entrance hangs a bell, which was struck in 1810, announcing the beginning of the War of Independence.
Since Aztec times, the government has been meeting here, and now the President of Mexico works in the National Palace. The Diego Rivera Museum, where you can admire frescoes, and the Historical Museum are open to visitors. In addition, there are gardens on the grounds.
Entrance to the palace is free with a passport. The attraction is open to visitors from Tuesday to Sunday from 9:00 to 17:00.
Cathedral
The main Catholic church of Mexico City was erected in the center of the city back in the XVI century. Since then, the cathedral has had to endure many historical events: attacks by conquistadors, the destruction of Aztec cultural monuments, and the transformation of Constitution Square.
The stones of the temple of Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, were used to construct the huge building. The cathedral in Mexico City was built with a nave more than 100 meters long, two towers with columns and arches about 70 meters high, as well as chimes.
In the external appearance of the structure are noticeable features of colonial architecture, which combines the Renaissance, neoclassicism and Mexican Baroque. The interior is richly decorated with marble, painted canvases and even ivory. It boasts a gilded altar and a majestic organ.
The temple is active, so you can visit it for free from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm any day of the week. For a fee of 10 pesos you can enter the most interesting halls of the cathedral. Here you can see carved wooden bas-reliefs, an organ, the burial of archbishops and dozens of bells in the tower.
Paseo de la Reforma
It is a wide avenue in the city center that cannot be avoided. The pedestrian part stretches for about 12 kilometers from Chapultepec Park to Madero Street. On Sundays, from morning to afternoon, the avenue is closed to cars and it becomes a pedestrian zone.
People come here from all parts of Mexico City to ride bikes, relax in the shade of the alleys or dance to the fiery Latin American rhythms in the company of Mexicans and visitors to the city. The Paseo de la Reforma also hosts various demonstrations, exhibitions and fairs.
The avenue is home to the Mexico City Independence Monument. The main attraction of the Paseo de la Reforma is in the form of a column on which a golden statue of the goddess of victory Niki rises 36 meters above the avenue. The base of the monument is a mausoleum where the heroes of the war are laid to rest. In addition to it, the avenue is decorated with numerous fountains and monuments.
Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe
The temple complex bears the name of the patron saint of Mexico. It is believed that it was built in the place where the Mexican Juan Diego was lucky enough to see Mary of Guadalupe.
The grounds include a plaza and Baroque temples richly decorated with sculptures and marble. One of them houses the cloak of Juan Diego, which bears the miraculous image of Mary of Guadalupe. In the garden in front of the basilica you can see a sculpture of a man at the moment of the apparition.
Tourists can visit the Museum of Religious Art, which houses thousands of artifacts dating back to different centuries. Among them are icons, sculptures, clothing and much more. There is also a seventeenth-century chapel on the grounds, next to which there is a beautiful view of the city.
The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe is open daily from 6:00 to 21:00.
Chapultepec Palace and Park
The only imperial palace in North America was built in the XVIII century on a hill that rises over 2000 meters above the city. The attraction is considered an example of classical castle architecture, which combined three styles: neo-Gothic, neoclassical and neo-Romanticism. It was once home to a military academy and an astronomical observatory, and now houses the National History Museum.
The palace features an exposition that tells the history of Mexico. All the objects in the museum are arranged in chronological order from the 15th century to the present. You will see paintings, murals and other works of art, including works by Frida Kahlo, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Chávez Morado.
You will also have the opportunity to view the interiors of the palace halls: living room, dining room, bedroom and bathroom. They are decorated with paintings and other interior furnishings. Be sure to check out the terrace, which offers panoramic views of the city, and the roof of the palace, where a garden with trees, flower beds and alleys is spread out.
Take time to also walk around Mexico City’s ancient park, which surrounds the attraction. There are fountains, monuments, reservoirs, a zoo, dozens of attractions and museums. One of the most visited in Mexico is the National Anthropological Museum, which features a collection on the history of Mexico in the pre-Columbian period. Among the artifacts is the famous Aztec calendar.
The palace is open Tuesday through Sunday from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. The ticket can be purchased online for 95 Mexican pesos.
Soumaya Museum
The prestigious Palanca neighborhood in Mexico City offers a glimpse of a modern futuristic building with an unusual shape resembling a huge anvil. The facade of the high-rise is lined with aluminum modules, which look like scales shimmering in the sun.
It houses the personal collection of paintings and sculptures of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, who named the museum after his wife.
The works include tens of thousands of artworks by both local and European masters, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Picasso, Marc Chagall, Diego Rivera and other famous painters and sculptors. The museum also houses applied arts and artifacts from the pre-Columbian era.
All of them are presented on six levels of the main hall. The room is illuminated by daylight entering the building through the glass roof. The floors are connected by a spiral staircase. The museum is free to visit any day of the week from 10:30 to 18:30.
Hispanic Tower
This is the first skyscraper in Latin America, which reaches a height of 181 meters together with the antenna. The 44-storey building is unique in its construction, as it was built in a seismic zone and is not afraid of earthquakes: 361 concrete piles were driven to a depth of 34 meters for the foundation.
At the very top of the skyscraper there is an open terrace from where visitors can see the historic center of Mexico City and the entire city. If you are lucky, you can even see the active Popocatepetl volcano.
On the top floors there are also cafes and museums with exhibitions dedicated to the construction of the tower and the history of the city.
You can buy a ticket to the observation deck on the tower’s website from 150 Mexican pesos. Come see the city from a bird’s eye view any day of the week from 9:00 to 21:00.
Sochimilko
The sights of Mexico City are not only structures. On the outskirts is the picturesque Sochimilco neighborhood. Every second tourist aspires to visit it. This place resembles Venice, but numerous canals here pass among vegetable gardens. Chinampas, so also called water-filled ditches, held the Aztecs as a transportation system. Their total length is more than 170 kilometers.
Today, about 14 kilometers of chinampas are used as a tourist attraction. The locals take everyone on a gondola ride on trachinera gondolas. You can even be taken to the mysterious Island of Dolls, where thousands of dolls and stuffed toys hang from the trees, which looks terrifying.
The cost of renting a colored boat is about 50-100 pesos per hour. There are also longer tours for a higher cost.
Teotihuacan
One of Mexico’s main attractions is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. After driving only 50 kilometers from the center of the capital, you will get to the abandoned settlement of Teotihuacan, which is known as the City of the Gods. It appeared around II-I century BC and by the III century after Christ became the largest economic center with a population of more than 200,000 people. However, about 300 years later, the Toltec army destroyed the city.
A popular tourist attraction in Teotihuacan is a hot air balloon flight over the ancient pyramids. This is an opportunity to see the hilly surroundings of Mexico and the pyramids flooded with dawn light.
Today, what remains of what was once the largest prosperous place are ruins – pyramids and stone temples with amazing statues and intricate frescoes. Among the famous sights is the five-tiered Pyramid of the Sun, 65 meters high and with each side of the base 210 meters long. The Pyramid of the Sun was once the tomb of the rulers underneath, and at its top was a temple with 248 steps leading up to it.
The Pyramid of the Moon, where local people used to perform rituals, is popular. In addition to the historical monuments, the Museum of Culture and Frescoes and the Exhibition Hall are available for viewing. They display artifacts found during the excavations of the city.
The complex is open daily from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, but the museums open at 9:00 am and close at 4:30 pm. Admission costs about 95 Mexican pesos.
Travel Tips
1. On Sunday, admission to many of the city’s museums is free.
2. On your trip to Mexico City, try the national Mexican specialties: guacamole (avocado salad), tacos (corn tortillas with meat and vegetables), ceviche (raw fish marinated in lime juice), burritos (tortilla roll), quesadillas (toasted corn pita with vegetables and meat), nachos (corn chips), fajitas (tortilla with meat or seafood, vegetables and sauces).
3. As a gift to loved ones from the trip usually bring a Becal panama, sombreros, painted skulls, Indian masks, amulets, maracas, ponchos and tequila.
4. The best time to travel to Mexico City is from December to April. In these months there is almost no rain and strong heat: air temperature usually does not rise above 29 °С, so you can easily explore the main sights of the capital of Mexico.
