🇲🇽 Mexico · Central Mexico
Mexico City is one of the world's great capitals: monumental, chaotic, vibrant and deeply historic. Built on the ruins of México-Tenochtitlán, the magnificent capital of the Mexica empire, it's a city where the pre-Hispanic past, viceregal splendor, the French-flavored elegance of the Porfiriato and the contemporary energy of a megalopolis of more than 21 million people live layer upon layer. Walking through CDMX means traveling through seven centuries of history without leaving the same block.
Every neighborhood has its own character. The Centro Histórico, a World Heritage Site, spreads around the enormous Zócalo with the Metropolitan Cathedral, the Palacio Nacional with Diego Rivera's murals and the ruins of the Templo Mayor; the Bosque de Chapultepec, one of the largest urban parks in the Americas, holds the Castle and the essential National Museum of Anthropology; Coyoacán and San Ángel keep cobbled streets, squares and colonial mansions, plus Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul; and the Roma and Condesa neighborhoods hold the best food, coffee and nightlife scene.
The city's pulse also beats in its icons: the Palacio de Bellas Artes with its glass dome, the Ángel de la Independencia on Paseo de la Reforma, the colorful trajineras of Xochimilco, the Basilica of Guadalupe —the most visited Catholic sanctuary in the Americas— and, an hour away, the colossal pyramids of Teotihuacán. And everywhere, the food: tacos al pastor, mole, tamales, mezcal and a cuisine declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Mexico City is, above all, an intense experience you take in with all your senses.
Mexico City was born as México-Tenochtitlán, founded by the Mexica (Aztecs), according to tradition on March 13, 1325, on an islet in Lake Texcoco, at the place where, fulfilling the prophecy of the god Huitzilopochtli, they found an eagle perched on a prickly pear devouring a snake —the image that appears today on the national coat of arms. In less than two centuries, Tenochtitlán became the most powerful city in Mesoamerica and one of the largest in the world, with close to half a million inhabitants, its causeways, canals, markets and the Templo Mayor in the ceremonial center. Everything changed with the arrival of the Spanish: Hernán Cortés and his Indigenous allies, after a long and brutal siege made worse by a smallpox epidemic, took the city on August 13, 1521, putting an end to the Mexica empire. On the ruins of Tenochtitlán the conquistadors raised the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, laying out the new city around what is today the Plaza de la Constitución (the Zócalo) and building the Cathedral, the palaces and the convents with the very stones of the demolished temples. For three centuries, the 'City of Palaces' was the political, religious and economic heart of the immense viceroyalty. Independence, completed in 1821, made it the capital of independent Mexico, the stage for the struggles of the 19th century, Benito Juárez's Reforma and the French intervention. Under the Porfiriato (1876-1910) the city modernized and took on a French look, with Paseo de la Reforma, the Ángel de la Independencia and the Palacio de Bellas Artes. The 20th century turned it into a megalopolis that grew without brakes, survived the devastating 1985 earthquake and established itself as one of the great cultural capitals of Latin America. The full story is on our history page.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The history of Mexico City begins with a founding myth burned into the national identity. According to tradition, the Mexica (or Aztecs), a Nahua people who had migrated from the mythical Aztlán guided by their patron god Huitzilopochtli, founded México-Tenochtitlán on 13 March 1325 on an islet in Lake Texcoco, at the exact spot where they found the prophesied sign: an eagle perched on a prickly pear cactus devouring a snake. That image is, to this day, the center of the emblem on the Mexican flag.
What began as a humble settlement on a marshy islet became, in less than two centuries, the most powerful city in Mesoamerica. The Mexica turned it into a prodigious metropolis: they won land from the lake with chinampas (floating gardens), built causeways linking it to the mainland, aqueducts bringing fresh water, a dense network of canals plied by canoes, and a great ceremonial center presided over by the Templo Mayor, the twin pyramid dedicated to Huitzilopochtli and Tláloc. At its height Tenochtitlán may have had close to 200,000 to 500,000 inhabitants, making it one of the largest cities in the world, bigger than many European capitals of the time.
From that capital the Mexica dominated much of central Mesoamerica through the Triple Alliance (with Texcoco and Tlacopan), an empire sustained by tribute, trade and war. When the Spanish first saw it in 1519 they were dazzled: the chronicles describe a white, gleaming city on the water, with its temples, palaces and a market, the one at Tlatelolco, whose size and abundance astonished them. It was the heart of an entire world about to change forever.
The fate of Tenochtitlán changed with the arrival of the Spanish. In 1519 Hernán Cortés landed on the Gulf coast and pushed inland, gathering Indigenous allies —above all the Tlaxcalans, bitter enemies of the Mexica— who would prove decisive. In November of that year Cortés and his men entered the dazzling capital for the first time, received by the tlatoani (ruler) Moctezuma II, in a meeting loaded with tension and misunderstanding between two worlds seeing each other for the first time.
Coexistence soon turned into conflict. After the massacre at the Templo Mayor carried out by the Spanish and the death of Moctezuma, the Mexica rose up and drove the invaders out in the so-called 'Noche Triste' (June 1520), when many conquistadors died fleeing the city. But Cortés regrouped, strengthened his Indigenous alliances and prepared the final assault. One devastating factor worked in his favor: a smallpox epidemic, brought by the Europeans, decimated the Mexica population, which had no defenses against the disease, badly weakening the resistance.
The final siege was brutal. For months the Spanish and their tens of thousands of Indigenous allies encircled Tenochtitlán by land and across the lake, cutting off water and supplies while fighting house by house. On 13 August 1521, after the capture of the last tlatoani, Cuauhtémoc, the city fell. The fall of Tenochtitlán marked the end of the Mexica empire and the start of the Spanish colonization of what would become Mexico, one of the most far-reaching events in the history of the Americas.
On the ruins of Tenochtitlán the Spanish raised a new city that would be the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, one of the richest and largest domains of the Spanish empire. Cortés ordered the colonial city built largely respecting the layout of the old Mexica ceremonial center: the main square —today's Zócalo— was set exactly where the Indigenous religious heart had been, and the demolished temples provided the stone for the new buildings. Over the Templo Mayor and its surroundings rose the Metropolitan Cathedral, the viceroy's palace (today the Palacio Nacional) and the buildings of power.
For three centuries Mexico City was the political, religious, economic and cultural center of the viceroyalty, seat of the viceroy, of the archbishopric and of the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico (one of the first in the Americas). The city filled with churches, convents, colleges and grand palaces built in the characteristic red volcanic stone (tezontle) and quarry stone, in a splendid baroque style that earned it the nickname 'the City of Palaces'. The wealth of New Spain's silver financed a lavish court and a remarkable cultural life.
The colonial city, however, dragged along a problem inherited from its lakebed origins: it was built on the bed of a lake, which caused recurring floods and the slow sinking of the ground (a phenomenon that continues today and explains why so many historic buildings lean). To fight the flooding, enormous drainage works were undertaken which, over the centuries, ended up drying out the old lakes of the Valley of Mexico almost completely. That viceregal society, deeply hierarchical and mestizo, gradually forged the identity of what would become Mexico.
The 19th century opened with the outbreak of the war of independence, begun in 1810 by the priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla with the 'Grito de Dolores'. After eleven years of fighting, independence was completed in 1821, when the Trigarante Army entered Mexico City in triumph and the city became the capital of the new independent Mexico. But the young nation entered decades of instability: coups, uprisings, Iturbide's short-lived monarchy, the loss of Texas and of half the national territory in the war against the United States (when American troops went as far as occupying the capital in 1847, an episode linked to the 'Niños Héroes' of Chapultepec).
Mid-century brought the Reforma, led by Benito Juárez, which separated Church and State, nationalized Church property and modernized the laws, in the middle of a bloody civil war between liberals and conservatives. The latter, seeking European backing, paved the way for the French intervention and the Second Empire: between 1864 and 1867 the Austrian archduke Maximilian of Habsburg and his wife Carlota reigned from Chapultepec Castle, and it was then that the great boulevard linking the castle with the center was laid out, today the Paseo de la Reforma. The empire ended with Maximilian's execution by firing squad and the restoration of the republic by Juárez.
The last part of the century was dominated by the Porfiriato, the more than three decades in which General Porfirio Díaz governed Mexico (1876-1911). It was a time of relative peace, economic growth, railways and modernization, but also of authoritarianism and deep inequality. Mexico City went through an intense French-inspired transformation: the Paseo de la Reforma was embellished with its roundabouts and monuments, the Ángel de la Independencia was unveiled in 1910 for the centenary, and construction began on gems such as the Palacio de Bellas Artes. The capital wanted to look like Paris, while social discontent grew beneath the surface.
The discontent that built up under the Porfiriato exploded in 1910 into the Mexican Revolution, the great armed and social process that would deeply mark Mexico's 20th century. After the fall of Díaz and years of fighting between the various revolutionary factions —with figures such as Madero, Zapata, Villa, Carranza and Obregón— the conflict left hundreds of thousands dead and led to the Constitution of 1917 and a new political order. Mexico City was the stage for key moments of that upheaval, such as the 'Decena Trágica' of 1913.
From the post-revolutionary years on, the capital grew explosively. Industrialization and migration from the countryside multiplied its population at a dizzying pace: from a little over a million inhabitants at the start of the 20th century to several million by mid-century, and to more than twenty million in its metropolitan area in recent decades, making it one of the largest megalopolises on the planet. The city spread unchecked over the old drained lakes and the surrounding valleys, with all the challenges that brings: traffic, pollution, subsidence and inequality.
A painful turning point was the earthquake of 19 September 1985, magnitude 8.1, which devastated large areas of the city center, killed thousands and left an indelible mark; the solidarity of the public in response marked the emergence of a more organized civil society. Strikingly, another strong quake would hit the city again on a 19 September, in 2017. Over the course of the century the capital also established itself as a great cultural beacon —from the muralism of Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros to literature, film and food— and in 2016 it shed its old status as the Federal District to become Mexico City (CDMX), an autonomous federal entity with its own constitution. Today it is one of the great cultural, historical and culinary capitals of Latin America.