Where to Stay in Mexico City, Ciudad de México

What is Mexico City known for?

Mexico City is known as the capital of Mexico and the cultural heart of the country. It draws visitors to a dense core of museums, among them the Frida Kahlo Museum and the Cineteca Nacional. Grand plazas and colonial churches fill the old centre.

The city stands over the ruins of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, and ranks as the largest city in North America. Museums run into the hundreds here.

What are the main landmarks in Mexico City?

Museums stand at almost every turn in Mexico City. The Frida Kahlo Museum and the Anahuacalli Museum honour the city's artists, while the Leon Trotsky House Museum keeps its exile's rooms intact. The Cineteca Nacional screens film, and the Planetario Joaquín Gallo maps the night sky.

Colonial churches such as the iglesia de San Juan Bautista mark the older squares. The city's past reaches back to its founding in 1521.

What is the history of Mexico City?

Mexico City began as Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that stood on this ground before any European arrived. That first city ranked among the great capitals of the Americas. Its Spanish founding is dated to 1521, when the conquest of Tenochtitlan brought a new city, raised on the ruins of the old, at the head of the colony of New Spain.

For centuries the capital governed a colonial territory that reached far across the North American continent. The old and the new sat one atop the other. After independence the city became the capital of the Mexican republic, and its hold over the country only deepened.

Through the 20th century it grew fast, spreading across the floor of the Valley of Mexico until it became the largest city in North America. The old plazas kept their place at the centre. Roads, rail and metro lines chased the growth outward.

Layer after layer remains. Aztec foundations, colonial churches and modern towers stand within a few streets of one another, and the museums of the capital, from the Frida Kahlo Museum to the Cineteca Nacional, keep that long record in view.

Where is Mexico City?

Mexico City sits on the floor of the Valley of Mexico, a high basin on the Mexican Central Plateau. The built-up area sprawls across that basin and climbs its edges, spilling from the old centre into boroughs like Benito Juárez and older southern neighbourhoods such as Culhuacán. Thin, high air marks the whole site.

The city stands well above sea level, high enough to keep its days temperate. Flat ground fills the middle.

What is the climate of Mexico City?

Mexico City has a mild, high-altitude climate that owes more to its elevation than to the tropics around it. Warm, bright days give way to cool nights across most of the year. The wet season brings afternoon storms in the warmer months.

Winters stay dry and clear, with only rare frost on the high floor of the Valley of Mexico. Spring feels almost constant.

How do you get to Mexico City?

Mexico City is the main entry point to the country, and its airport is a major hub for the whole of the Americas. Long-haul flights land here from across the world. From the terminals, a wide metro and a network of buses carry travellers across the Valley of Mexico.

Highways and rail lines link the capital to every corner of Mexico. Traffic is the one constant.