The Historical Centre is the oldest part of Mexico City and it’s also the area that contains some of the most appreciated cultural treasures of the country. The Centre, as the inhabitants of the city call it, is an area of streets which invites us to travel to the past and remember its times of splendor, times in which viceroys and high-ranking officials traveled upon horse-drawn carriages, whilst merchants, friars and nuns, craftsmen and other characters walked through the famous and beautiful streets of the “City of Palaces”.

In the Historical Centre of Mexico City you can find true architectural treasures like the Metropolitan Cathedral; built over three centuries, it comprises different styles of the viceroyship. Just a few steps away from the Cathedral, you can find the National Palace, seat of the Mexican Executive Power, and the City Hall, both of them in front of the city’s Zócalo (public square) or Square of the Constitution (second largest in the world after Moscow’s Red Square).

Walking towards the area of the Alameda Central, on the street 5 de mayo, we find ourselves surrounded by outstanding examples of porfirian eclectic architecture. Not far from there, on Tacuba Street, we can find some of the city’s traditional places, like the Tacuba Café, a pleasant restaurant; decorated in excellent Mexican style with Talavera mosaic and where they serve exquisite traditional Mexican dishes. Tolsá Plaza is found on the same street, it’s a place of great architectural harmony; it holds buildings like the National Museum of Art, one of the most beautiful buildings in the Historical Centre, and also the Mining Palace, of austere Neoclasic sobriety which houses the Mining Palace Book Fair, one of the most concurred of the city. Almost in front of Tolsá Plaza, to one side of the Mining Palace, there stands the beautiful Mail Palace (or Post Office Palace), a building of refined style inspired in Venetian architecture.

Right in front of the Mail Palace, on the other side of Eje Central Avenue, we can find the wonderful Palace of Fine Arts, one of the most beautiful concert halls in the world; decorated with impressive Art Nouveau style sculptures on the exterior, which contrast with the sober elegance of its Art Deco interior, decorated with prehispanic and geometric motifs. It’s in the front of this Palace, from where we can appreciate another of the city’s most symbolic buildings, the Latinamerican Tower, the first skyscraper in the city and, in its time, the highest construction in Latinamerica; which houses in its peak a viewpoint, a lookout from which, in clear days, we can get beautiful views of the entire city.

The Historical Centre of Mexico City is such an amazing place that we could never finish mentioning all of its great features and legends; same of which have come to be part of a national legacy, which has led the UNESCO to declare it “Cultural Heritage of the World”. An intense campaign of restoration has been undertaken over the last few years to regenerate the zone, giving it back the splendor and dynamism that characterized it in earlier times.
 
Places of interest in this area:

·         Zocalo

·         Palace of Fine Arts

·         Alameda Central

·         Latinamerican Tower

·         National Museum of Art

For more information log on to Mexico City’s Historical Centre Foundation webpage: http://www.viveelcentro.org.mx