A city on a lake: Mexico City’s great sights

About A city on a lake: Mexico City’s great sights

By the ULTIMATE Mexico City Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Mexico City stands on the bed of a lake. The Mexica built Tenochtitlan on an island in it, and at its centre the Templo Mayor, the great temple with twin shrines to Tlaloc, god of water, and Huitzilopochtli, god of war (CDMX official tourism site). Its ruins lie a few steps from the Zócalo, the vast square framed by the Catedral Metropolitana and the Palacio Nacional. UNESCO inscribed the Historic Centre of Mexico City and Xochimilco, the last of the lake’s canals, as a World Heritage site in 1987.

The Zócalo and the Templo Mayor

The Templo Mayor museum displays more than 3,000 objects of Mexica culture, from offerings to the stages of the temple’s construction (CDMX official tourism site). The Catedral Metropolitana fills the north side of the Zócalo, and the Palacio Nacional, with its murals, its east side.

Bellas Artes and the Alameda

West along Madero, past the Casa de los Azulejos, the Palacio de Bellas Artes faces the Alameda Central. It is the home of the Ballet Folklórico de México and of the national theatre, dance, symphony and opera companies, with a main hall of some 1,700 seats (CDMX official tourism site). Across the road, the Palacio Postal opened in 1907 (CDMX official tourism site), and the Torre Latinoamericana has the city’s best-known viewing deck.

The big museums close on Mondays: plan the Centro for a Monday, the museums for the rest of the week.

Chapultepec

Bosque de Chapultepec is the city’s great park. On its hill stands the Castillo de Chapultepec, home of the Museo Nacional de Historia; below it, on Reforma, the Museo Nacional de Antropología keeps the Sun Stone at the heart of its galleries.

Coyoacán and the south

In Coyoacán the Museo Frida Kahlo occupies the Blue House, the Kahlo family home since 1904 and a museum since 1958 (CDMX official tourism site); further south, UNESCO lists the central campus of the UNAM’s Ciudad Universitaria (2007).

Our advice: buy timed tickets for the Casa Azul on its own website well ahead, and book a Casa Barragán visit before you fly.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with A city on a lake: Mexico City’s great sights before you go.