Mexico City

Park Life
Providing no guidance with city navigation, but lovely nonetheless, are the city’s many parks. Alameda Central, located in the heart of downtown, was the first urban park on the continent and draws large crowds to outdoor sculptures, fountains, markets, and public concerts. At the East end, Palacio de Bellas, one of the city’s most prominent cultural centers, hosts theater, music, opera and dance performances, and its several floors of murals by México’s most renowned painters make it worth a visit.

Twice the size of New York’s Central Park, Chapultepec Forest are the lungs of the city and the most important ecological space. Divided into several sections with running trails, ponds, and memorials, the park is home to the largest and most visited museum in México, the National Museum of Anthropology. Chapultepec Castle looks down upon the city from atop a large hill above the contemporary art museum, Museo Rufino Tamayo.

A testament to how quickly the city is changing, Jardín del Arte Sullivan was initially recommended to me by local photographer Mark Powell as “one of the last un-gentrified parks in central México City, full of colorful concrete-poured benches and ledges, giant bird cages and still lots of glue sniffers around keeping it real.” A few months later, and it has been already been cordoned off for remodeling.

South of the city center, the largest university in the world, UNAM is home to the Teodoro González de León-designed University Museum of Contemporary Art. Nearby, unimaginable varieties of cactus line the snaking paths and hidden coves of one of the oldest botanical gardens in México, the Instituto de Biologia. The 420-acre campus also has its own ecological reserve where the land art masterpiece, Espacio Escultórico, is located.

Roma is home to Galeria OMR, MAIA Contemporary, and Galleria Licenciado, among others. Closer to Polanco and not too far from Museo Soumaya and Museo Jumex are Anonymous Gallery and Galeria Luis Adelantado. In Centro Historico, a block from Alameda Central and next to his clothing company Tony Delfino, is artist Smithe’s newest endeavor, TOBA Gallery. While in Centro Historico, keep your eyes peeled for world-class murals from international stars of street art as well as a constantly shifting canvas of graffiti and murals by local artists. A fun alternative is Stylewalk MX, which has enlisted the expertise of several of the artists themselves to offer in-depth and informed tours of the downtown street art and graffiti scene.

Getting Around
Even with a fairly robust public transit system, the traffic in México City is often horrendous. The metro, used by around seven million people every day, has 12 lines and 195 stations, and can be a convenient way to explore if sitting in traffic or walking sounds exhausting. This subterranean world is an experience in itself, with hidden gems like Talismán station, which houses the fossilized remains of a mammoth that workers uncovered during construction. Another, Pino Suárez, is built around an Aztec pyramid. Some of the larger stations have shopping, food, art exhibits and the occasional spontaneous salsa concert. You can also take the Metro to see places a little out of the way, like the iconic head sculpture and monument to former president Benito Juárez at La Cabeza de Juárez in Iztapalapa.

Mescal is the drink of choice in much of México but its thousand year-old ancestor, Pulque has recently enjoyed a resurgence and can be found in a new wave of trendy bars such as Pulqueria Los Insurgentes, where patrons swig giant mugs of the thick, white, slimy, fermented cactus sap and dance beneath Daniel Lezama paintings. Disregard descriptions of the drink’s texture; it has a fascinating history and is worth experiencing. A plaque on the wall outside a Pulqueria at Plaza Garibaldi advertises the drink as a favorite of the Aztec emperors.

Garibaldi is where you go, literally any hour of the day, if you decide you need a Mariachi. Packs of musicians offer their services to passing traffic as well as visitors and patrons of food and drink establishments inside the square. It is an incredible place for people watching.

Markets
Find open air markets or neighborhoods dedicated to certain goods, unlike the big box stores and Amazon delivery services. On Sundays, down the street from Plaza Garibaldi, La Lagunilla Market (below) hosts a flea and antique market where an eclectic collection of books, memorabilia, masks and other arts and crafts from the last hundred or so years line the sidewalks. Get there early and plan several hours of digging for treasure. Mercado de la Merced is one of the city’s oldest and largest markets. Emerging from the metro station into the middle of the market means winding through a maze of vendors selling everything from pots and pans to three-piece-suits for your toddler.

Across the street, Mercado de Sonora, referred to by tourists as, “The Witchcraft Market,” is where to go for a taxidermied horse head or potion for your broken heart. Aisles are lined with voodoo dolls, medicinal herbs and the occasional endangered animal carcass, among other things.

I intended on visiting México City for a week, maybe two, but ended up staying a month and feeling like I needed a year, maybe more, to even begin to experience the place. As the artist Saner relates, “It is rich in every sense, with nature, history, tradition, art, and color, but also with rebellion, bad governments, poverty, and injustice. It is for all of these reasons I continue to stay here, taking inspiration from every part of this place.”

Killing nearly 300 and flattening buildings across the city and region, the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck on September 19, 2017 devastated a country already reeling from another earthquake that struck less than two weeks prior. Rebuilding and healing is a lengthy process, but hopefully this famously resilient city will emerge even stronger.