Tabacalera, Mexico City — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Tabacalera?

Few colonias this size carry so long a list. The Franz Mayer Museum, the Museo Nacional de San Carlos, the Museo Nacional de la Estampa and the Museo Mural Diego Rivera sit within the same few streets, with the Museum of Memory and Tolerance and the Folk Art Museum among them. Churches hold their ground.

The Church of San Francisco and the Parish of Santa María la Redonda stand near the Hemicycle to Juárez and the Colon Monument, while the Antimonumenta and the Glorieta de las mujeres que luchan occupy public ground of a different kind.

What is the history of Tabacalera?

The colonia dates from the late 19th century, planned alongside Colonia San Rafael and Colonia Santa María la Ribera, and from the early 1900s it filled with mansions and apartment blocks. The Monument to the Revolution and the El Moro skyscraper belong to the first half of that century. Writers, artists and exiles followed.

By the 1950s the colonia had a bohemian reputation, and Fidel Castro and Ernesto "Che" Guevara met here and began planning the Cuban Revolution. Later accounts turn to decline, though the traditional Mexican cantinas that filled the colonia in better years still trade.

Where is Tabacalera?

The colonia runs along the western edge of the historic centre inside Cuauhtémoc, with Colonia San Rafael and Colonia Santa María la Ribera alongside it.