Roma & Condesa

Roma and Condesa are Mexico City's twin neighbourhood stars — adjacent colonias (districts) that together form the city's centre of gravity for dining, nightlife, and the kind of tree-lined, walkable urbanism that makes Mexico City one of the most liveable megacities in the world. Roma has the art galleries, the mezcalerías, and the crumbling Art Nouveau mansions. Condesa has the parks, the cafés, and the Art Deco apartment buildings. Together, they contain more excellent restaurants per block than almost anywhere in the Americas.

Colonia Roma was developed in the early 20th century for Mexico City's upper class, and the architecture reflects the Porfirian-era taste for European styles — Art Nouveau townhouses with ornate ironwork, Beaux-Arts mansions, and a few buildings by European architects that could pass for Parisian apartments. The 1985 earthquake devastated much of Roma, and the rebuilding attracted a younger, creative class that turned the damaged neighbourhood into the cultural district it is today. The Casa Lamm cultural centre, the galleries on Colima and Orizaba streets, and the mezcal bars that occupy former mansions are all products of this reinvention.

Condesa, centred on the oval Parque México and the circular Parque España, is Mexico City's most architecturally consistent neighbourhood — blocks of 1920s-30s Art Deco apartments with curved facades, porthole windows, and geometric detailing that give the streets a visual coherence rare in a city this chaotic. The restaurant scene in both neighbourhoods is world-class: Contramar (seafood), Rosetta (Italian-Mexican), Pujol (tasting menu by Enrique Olvera), and dozens of excellent taquerías, cafés, and cocktail bars within walking distance of each other.