Routes built around how the city moves, not a list of landmarks with no plan for getting between them, plus what's worth seeking out once you're here: the shopping worth the suitcase space, the buildings worth looking up at, and the sites still standing — or buried — from before the city had its current name.
The layover/one-day version: a tight loop through Centro Histórico and Chapultepec, one real meal instead of three rushed ones, and an honest list of what you're skipping.
Three days covers the essentials. Five adds a day trip, usually Teotihuacán. Seven or more leaves room to slow down.
Colonial-era churches, Art Deco landmarks, and the midcentury buildings scattered through Roma and Condesa that most visitors walk past without noticing.
Two excavated pre-Hispanic sites make it easy to see the city that stood here before this one, from a ticketed ruin a few steps off the Zócalo to a temple built straight into a metro station. The museums worth pairing them with belong here too.
Two very different kinds of shopping: the artisan markets worth digging through for something real, the malls that never went out of style here the way they did in the US, and the specific, slightly odd things worth bringing home.
From the largest urban park in Latin America to the Art Deco square at the center of Condesa, the parks worth building an afternoon around.
Live things worth building a night around, starting with the sport a tax inspector brought home from Texas and turned into a Friday-night institution.
Weekly emails — what's happening in CDMX, plus a deep-dive guide.
One weekly note on what's happening in CDMX, plus a deep-dive from the guide — no need to come back and check.