Mex ico cit y There are few places as dynamic, diverse or mind-bogglingly large as the Mexican capital. In a city layered with history, in which change is an essential part of residents’ DNA, where to begin planning a trip? Michael Snyder gives his breakdown of the eight neighborhoods to visit, whether your focus is shopping, food, art or design. PHOTOGRAPHed BY Lindsay L auckner Gundlock
A little more than two years ago, I moved to Mexico City more or less sight unseen, taking it on good faith that this urban giant could find space for one more body among the 21 million that already called its entire metro area home. I came, like many foreigners before me, with vague ideas about its vibrant food and art scenes; its crooked glamour and effortless cool; its rich colonial and modern architectural landscape. I expected to find moments of enervating chaos and sometimes choking smog. But I was rejuvenated by gracious parks and sublime weather, by crisp autumn mornings and springlike afternoons, by spasms of rain and hail and thunder that gave way, just in time, to marigold sunsets blooming across the horizon. Mexico City, it seems, is able to turn a different face to each of its inhabitants. That’s because, in the past five centuries, Mexico City has become a master of transformation. Flung wide across a seismic, high-altitude plateau, North America’s largest city has survived colonial conquest, years-long floods, a bloody war of independence, a bloodier revolution,
96
april 2019 / tr av el andleisure asia .com
and, in 1985, a catastrophic earthquake that killed more than 9,000 and decimated much of the historic central borough of Cuauhtémoc. Thirty-two years later to the day, in 2017, another quake shook the city to its core, bringing down about 40 buildings and damaging many more. Within weeks, the city had bounced back from that, too. Chilangos, as residents are known, continue to deal with shoddy governance, shoddy infrastructure and fluctuating levels of security. Given the choice, many would just as soon return to the villages they left a generation or three before. But many more wouldn’t live anywhere else. No one trip is enough to unlock the city’s many wonders. For a firsttime visitor, sticking to the leafy neighborhoods in and around the Delegación Cuauhtémoc offers an ideal introduction: a walkable, manageable microcosm of the city’s wild, sophisticated whole. From the cockeyed grandeur of the Centro Histórico to the discreet galleries of Santa María la Ribera and the glamorous cafés of Condesa, these are the eight districts every visitor should get to know.
