Mexico City Neighbourhoods

Centro Histórico. Nine square kilometres of stacked history: the Mexica precinct, the colonial capital on top of it, and a working commercial district on top of that. Loud, crowded and flat by day; empty after nine at night. Everything in a first day's sightseeing is here.

Roma Norte. Laid out from 1902 for the Porfirian rich, wrecked by the 1985 earthquake, cheap for a decade and then colonised by galleries and restaurants. Tree-lined, walkable, and where most visitors end up eating twice.

Condesa. Roma's quieter neighbour, built in the 1920s and 1930s around two parks and an oval avenue that traces a racecourse. Art Deco blocks, dogs, joggers, and a lower median room rate.

Polanco. Embassies, modernist houses, Avenida Masaryk and the country's densest concentration of expensive restaurants, on the northern edge of Chapultepec park. Quiet after ten in a way that is either the point or the objection.

Coyoacán. A village the city grew around: two plazas, a covered market, cobbled streets, and the two houses tied to Frida Kahlo. Forty minutes south, and the natural first half of a day that ends at Xochimilco.

San Ángel. Coyoacán's smaller sibling, a further twenty minutes south-west: cobbles, colonial houses, the Saturday Bazar Sábado art market and the Rivera–Kahlo studio houses. Worth a morning if you have five days or more, and walkable from Coyoacán if you like walking.

Insurgentes, north–south, carries the Metrobús past Roma and Condesa and is the fastest way between them and the rest of the city. Reforma, diagonal, runs from the Centro past Chapultepec towards Polanco, and closes to cars on Sunday mornings for the cycling programme. Metro Line 3, north–south, is the Coyoacán line, and Line 2 is the Centro one.

The practical consequence is the rule this whole guide runs on: one district a day. Centro on one, Chapultepec and Polanco on another, Coyoacán and Xochimilco on a third, with Roma or Condesa as the place you sleep and eat. The three-day itinerary is that rule with hours attached, and getting around has the fares that make it cheap.

Condesa, for most people, most of the time: the parks, the Art Deco, the dogs at ten at night, the restaurants without Roma's noise, and a median room rate below Roma's and Polanco's. It is the district visitors most often say they would come back to.

If 'nicest' means grandest, it is Polanco; if it means most alive, Roma Norte; if it means most characterful, Coyoacán. If it means most useful for a four-day trip, it is the Centro, which nobody calls nice and everybody needs. The choice is genuinely about what you want your evenings to look like — where to stay prices each one.

Tepito, a few blocks north-east of the Zócalo, is the one every resident names: a wholesale and street-market district with a serious reputation and nothing a visitor needs. Iztapalapa and the eastern edge are ordinary working boroughs a long way from anything on this site's itineraries. Santa Fe, west, is an office and mall district built for cars — corporate rather than dangerous, and dull for a visitor.

Zona Rosa is the borderline case: the city's traditional nightlife and LGBT district off Reforma, lively and worth an evening, and shabbier and pushier than Roma or Condesa. Go if the nightlife is why you came; sleep elsewhere. What the advisories actually say, district by district, is on safety and scams.

Sleep in Roma or Condesa, give the Centro a day, Chapultepec and Polanco a day, and Coyoacán with Xochimilco a third — with Teotihuacán on the Monday when the museums close. That is the three-day itinerary plus its fourth day, and it is the shape almost every good first visit takes.

The whole plan, with the tickets and the closing days that drive it, is on the Mexico City city guide.