Mexico City

Mexico City operates at a scale that takes time to absorb. Home to over twenty million people, it is one of the largest cities in the world — and yet its best neighborhoods reveal themselves at the pace of a walk, not a tour bus. Condesa and Roma Norte are full of art deco apartment buildings, street trees, and the kind of all-day café culture that makes it easy to lose an afternoon. Coyoacán, further south, has the feel of a colonial town that the city eventually grew around: cobbled streets, a central plaza shaded by old jacaranda trees, and the Casa Azul where Frida Kahlo was born and spent much of her life.

The historical weight of the place is impossible to ignore. The Zócalo, one of the largest public squares in the world, is flanked by a cathedral built from the stones of a demolished Aztec temple, and beneath the adjacent ruins of the Templo Mayor you can see where those stones came from. The Museo Nacional de Antropología in Chapultepec Park holds the most important collection of pre-Columbian artifacts in the world and alone justifies a trip to the city. Rivera's murals in the Palacio Nacional, depicting the whole sweep of Mexican history across three walls, are among the most ambitious works of art the twentieth century produced.

The food scene deserves its own itinerary. Mexico City has one of the highest concentrations of taco stands per capita of any city on earth, and the quality is extraordinary even at the most unpretentious street level — al pastor carved from a spit, barbacoa wrapped in maguey leaves, quesadillas made from blue corn masa cooked directly on the griddle. At the same time, a generation of chefs has built restaurants here that draw international attention. Come with an appetite and plan your days around eating rather than around sights.