Juárez and Anzures with La Zona Rosa

Reforma Avenue is one of Mexico City's most celebrated and visited avenues. It cuts across the city, connecting its most important business and government districts. The neighborhoods surrounding it (Colonia Juárez, Cuauhtemoc, and Zona Rosa along with nearby Anzures) are bustling with activity, each offering unique ways of experiencing local life.

Adjacent to the city center, Colonia Juárez is essentially an extension of it and represents Mexico’s eclectic “all things European” period of architecture that engulfed the city in the late 1800s and early 20th century. As politicians, bankers, and other high-society types moved away from the city’s bustling center, La Juárez became a sort of suburb for downtown. Recently, it regained popularity with a flurry of new restaurants, bars, and shops. Just north of La Roma and Condesa, it’s also receiving the inevitable overflow of those booming neighborhoods while still maintaining its less-frequented-by-tourists nature, making it still friendly to the artistic set, at least for now.

La Zona Rosa is part of La Juárez and makes its home in the southwest corner of the colonia, nestled between Reforma Avenue and Insurgentes. "The Pink Zone" has been known for decades as the city’s main LGBTQ+ neighborhood. With its streets lined with kitschy sex shops, beauty salons, nail parlors, gay bars, karaoke clubs, Asian restaurants, and the occasional embassy, this is one neighborhood that truly never sleeps.

Separated from Juárez by Paseo de la Reforma Avenue, one of Mexico City’s broadest and most connected thoroughfares, Colonia Cuauhtémoc is at once big business and residential. With many international banks and other companies, it is one of the main business sections of the city. But take a step away from busy Reforma and you'll find the neighborhood is also home to office workers and people who lived in the area before any of its tall buildings appeared. Colonia Cuauhtémoc also has a number of small restaurants that cater to its increasingly diverse inhabitants.

Just northwest of Juárez and bordering the northeast side of Bosque de Chapultepec (the city's main park), Anzures is a small colonia lined with leafy boulevards and two-story art deco homes, its skyline dotted only by a few tall apartment and office buildings. Quiet by nature, and even more so since the 2017 earthquake left some of its buildings uninhabitable, it functions as a suburb of neighboring Polanco and Cuauhtémoc while still effectively being right in the middle of all the action. The charm of this neighborhood is simply how peaceful it is.