Mexico City & the Centre

The Valley of Mexico was a basin of shallow lakes ringed by volcanoes, and it drew people early. Teotihuacan, founded around the start of the Common Era, grew by about AD 500 into one of the largest cities in the world, with perhaps 100,000 people living along its grid of streets, before it was burned and largely abandoned in the 6th or 7th century. The Toltecs later ruled from Tula in what is now Hidalgo, and Cholula, occupied for over two thousand years, raised the largest pyramid by volume in the world.

In 1325, by tradition, the Mexica founded Tenochtitlan on an island in Lake Texcoco, and their Triple Alliance came to rule much of Mesoamerica. The Tlaxcalans, never conquered by them, allied with Hernán Cortés in 1519; Cortés massacred Cholula's nobles on the way to the capital, which fell in 1521 after a siege. Mexico City was built on its ruins as the capital of New Spain, and the Spanish founded Puebla in 1531 as a town for settlers between the capital and the port of Veracruz. Silver from Taxco and Pachuca paid for the churches, and the lakes were slowly drained.

Independence and the 19th century were fought over here: US troops took Mexico City in 1847, and Mexican forces beat the French at Puebla on 5 May 1862, the origin of Cinco de Mayo. Emiliano Zapata's peasant revolution of 1910 began in the sugar country of Morelos. In the 20th century the capital swelled into a megacity; an earthquake on 19 September 1985 killed thousands, another on the same date in 2017 killed 370, and in 2016 the Federal District was renamed Mexico City, with greater autonomy.

A resident of the capital is a chilango, a word once used as a put-down and now worn with pride, and the city's slang, humour and speed set it apart from the provincial towns around it. Poblanos, from Puebla, are known for a conservative, churchgoing streak. Indigenous languages remain alive: Nahuatl in parts of Puebla and in some villages south of the capital, and Otomí, or Hñähñu, in Hidalgo's Mezquital valley.

Religion is visible everywhere. The Basilica of Guadalupe, on the hill of Tepeyac where the Virgin is said to have appeared to Juan Diego in 1531, draws millions of pilgrims around 12 December. Carnival brings the jumping chinelos dancers of Morelos, in masks and plumed hats, to Tepoztlán and other towns, and the Day of the Dead is kept with candlelit vigils in the cemetery at Mixquic.

Crafts are regional signatures: Talavera pottery from Puebla and Tlaxcala, shared with Spain on UNESCO's intangible heritage list; Taxco's silverwork; bark-paper amate from the Otomí village of San Pablito in Puebla. Mexico City is also the country's cultural engine, home to Diego Rivera's murals in the National Palace, to lucha libre at the Arena México, to mariachis for hire in Plaza Garibaldi, and to the pan-Latin publishing, film and music industries.

Mexico City proper has about 9 million people, and its metropolitan area, which spills far into the State of México, more than 21 million. Puebla has over three million in its metropolitan area, Toluca, Cuernavaca, Pachuca and Tlaxcala are smaller state capitals, and much of the rest is farming country dotted with market towns.

The capital runs on government, finance, services, media and a huge informal economy of street vendors and small workshops. The belt around it is industrial: car plants, including the large Volkswagen works at Puebla, and factories along the highways into the State of México and Hidalgo. Many residents of Tlaxcala, Hidalgo and Morelos commute or migrate to the capital for work.

Days in the city start early to beat long commutes and end late, with a big comida in mid-afternoon and street stalls selling tacos and tamales from dawn to after midnight. Water is a constant issue — the city is sinking as its aquifer is pumped, and taps in poorer districts run dry in the dry season — along with traffic, air quality and rising rents in Roma and Condesa, where remote workers from abroad have settled since 2020.

Puebla has the richest reputation. Mole poblano is a dark sauce of several dried chillies, chocolate, nuts, seeds and spices served over turkey or chicken; chiles en nogada, stuffed poblano chillies in a white walnut sauce scattered with pomegranate seeds, show the green, white and red of the flag and are eaten in late summer. The city also makes cemitas, big sesame-bun sandwiches with milanesa and papalo herb, and chalupas, small fried tortillas with salsa and shredded meat, and it is known for its sweets, including camotes, sugared sweet-potato rolls.

Mexico City's signature is the taco al pastor, pork marinated in chillies and cooked on a vertical spit, a method that arrived with Lebanese immigrants. Its markets and streets add tlacoyos, oval blue-corn cakes filled with beans; quesadillas, often made without cheese here; tamales in a bread roll, the guajolota; and elotes and esquites, corn on the cob or in a cup.

Hidalgo is the land of barbacoa, lamb slow-cooked in a pit wrapped in maguey leaves, and of pastes, the pasties brought by Cornish miners to Real del Monte and Pachuca. Pulque, the milky fermented sap of the maguey, was the Aztec drink and is still made in Hidalgo, Tlaxcala and the State of México, sometimes flavoured with fruit or oats. Seasonal delicacies include escamoles, ant larvae, and chapulines, toasted grasshoppers.

Mexico City needs several days. The historic centre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, holds the Zócalo, the Metropolitan Cathedral, the National Palace with Rivera's murals, the Templo Mayor and the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Chapultepec Park contains the National Museum of Anthropology and the hilltop castle; Coyoacán has Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul; the painted boats of Xochimilco float on the canals of the old lake; and the campus of the national university, with its mosaic-covered library, is also on the UNESCO list.

North-east of the capital, Teotihuacan's Avenue of the Dead runs past the Pyramid of the Sun to the Pyramid of the Moon, with the Temple of the Feathered Serpent at its southern end. To the east, beyond the volcanoes Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl, Puebla's centre is a grid of tiled façades, the cathedral and the gilded Rosary Chapel in the church of Santo Domingo; neighbouring Cholula has its tunnelled Great Pyramid, the church of Los Remedios on top, and a reputed church for every day of the year. Tlaxcala has the painted murals of Cacaxtla.

To the south, Cuernavaca has the Palace of Cortés, while Tepoztlán's path climbs to the Tepozteco pyramid above the village. The 16th-century monasteries on the slopes of Popocatépetl are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Taxco, across the state line in Guerrero, hangs on a hillside around its baroque church of Santa Prisca and its silver shops. West of the capital lie the Aztec rock-cut temple at Malinalco and the crater lakes of the Nevado de Toluca.

In Hidalgo, the Grutas de Tolantongo fill a canyon with a warm, turquoise river, caves and cliffside pools; the basalt columns of Huasca de Ocampo, the mining town of Real del Monte and the stone warriors of Tula are the state's other draws.