5 Best Sights in Centro Histórico, Mexico City

The center of government in Mexico City since the time of the Mexica (aka Aztecs), Palacio Nacional's long, volcanic stone facade is both a symbol of political power and a staging ground for acts of resistance. Construction of the national palace was initiated by Cortés on the site of Moctezuma II's royal residence and remodeled by the viceroys. Its current form dates from 1693, although its third floor was added in 1926. If it's open to the public, the entire building is worth a look, even just for the novel experience of wandering freely through an influential nation's primary seat of government, but most visitors come for Diego Rivera's sweeping murals on the second floor of the main courtyard. For more than 20 years, starting in 1929, Rivera and his assistants mounted scaffolds day and night, perfecting techniques adapted from Renaissance Italy's frescoes. The result is nearly 1,200 square feet of vividly painted wall space, titled Epica del Pueblo Mexicano en su Lucha por la Libertad y la Independencia (Epic of the Mexican People in Their Struggle for Freedom and Independence). The paintings represent two millennia of Mexican history, filtered through Rivera's imagination; only a few vignettes acknowledge the more violent elements of some pre-Hispanic societies. As you walk around, you'll pass images of the savagery of the conquest and the hypocrisy of the Spanish priests, the noble independence movement, and the bloody revolution. Marx appears amid scenes of class struggle, toiling workers, industrialization (which Rivera idealized), bourgeois decadence, and nuclear holocaust. These are among Rivera's finest works—as well as the most accessible and probably the most visited. The palace also houses a minor museum that focuses on 19th-century president Benito Juárez and the Mexican Congress. Other exhibition spaces house rotating, and sometimes quite extraordinary, exhibitions, typically advertised on a large billboard in the Zócalo.

The liberty bell rung by Padre Hidalgo to proclaim independence in 1810 hangs high on the central facade. It chimes every eve of September 16, while from the balcony the president repeats "El Grito," the historic shout of independence, to throngs of citizens below.

The Palacio Nacional has historically been open to visitors, but the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrado changed this and private tours are currently not allowed. This is likely to change with the next presidential election in June 2024.

Mexico City's main post office building, designed by Italian architect Adamo Boari and Mexican engineer Gonzalo Garita, is a fine example of Renaissance Revival architecture. Constructed of cream-color sandstone from Teayo, Puebla, and Carrara, Italy, it epitomizes the grand Eurocentric architecture common in Mexico during the Porfiriato—the long dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911). For many, it's one of Mexico's most splendid buildings. Tours in Spanish are available and can be booked on their website. 

The ruins of the sacred shrine of the Mexica (also commonly known as the Aztec) empire, built here in the 14th century, were unearthed accidentally in 1978 by telephone repairmen and the vast, 3-acre archaeological site has since become the old city's most compelling museum. At this temple, whose two twin shrines were dedicated to the sun god Huitzilopochtli and the rain god Tláloc, captives from the empire's near-constant wars of conquest were sacrificed in rituals commemorated in carvings of skulls visible deep in the temple compound. The adjacent Museo del Templo Mayor contains thousands of pieces unearthed from the site and others across central Mexico, including ceramic warriors, stone carvings and knives, skulls of sacrificial victims, models and scale reproductions, and a room on the Spaniards' destruction of Tenochtitlán. The centerpiece is an 8-ton disk unearthed at the Templo Mayor depicting the dismembered moon goddess Coyolxauhqui.

The proximity between Templo Mayor and Catedral Metropolitana is no coincidence. When the Spanish conquistadors defeated the Mexica empire, they intentionally destroyed their places of worship, and used the stones from the temples to build churches.

One of the world's largest urban squares, Mexico City's Zócalo is the clearest expression of the city's immense importance as the capital of New Spain: a showpiece of colonial power and wealth and, after independence, a symbol for every element of Mexico's complex political identity.

Zócalo literally means "pedestal" or "base"; in the mid-19th century, an independence monument was planned for the square, but only the base was built. The term stuck, however, and now the word "zócalo" is applied to the main plazas in many Mexican cities. Mexico City's Zócalo (because it's the original, it's always capitalized) is used for government rallies, protests, sit-ins, and festive events. It's the focal point for Independence Day celebrations on the eve of September 16 and is a maze of lights, tinsel, and traders during the Christmas season. Flag-raising and -lowering ceremonies take place here in the early morning and late afternoon.

Formally called the Plaza de la Constitución, the enormous paved square, the largest in the Western Hemisphere, occupies the site of the ceremonial center of Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Mexica empire, which once comprised 78 buildings. From the early 18th century until the mid-1900s, the plaza housed a market known as El Parián, specializing in luxury goods imported from Asia on the Manila Galleons, Spanish trading ships that crossed the Pacific from the Philippines to Acapulco. And while the Zócalo has seen the rise and fall of governments and movements for seven centuries, many of the rust-red facades that ring the plaza today—save for the first two floors of the emblematic Palacio Nacional and the Cathedral—were only added in the early 20th century, built in the neo-colonial style in fashion following the Revolution.

The Zócalo is the heart of Centro Histórico, and many of the neighborhood's sights are on the plaza's borders or just a few short blocks away. Even as the Mexican economy has gradually begun to centralize in recent years, the Zócalo remains the indisputable center of the nation.

This museum with a big gift shop (or shop with a small museum) and café features small expositions of contemporary Mexican design. The goals of the museum are to provide a space for design, to assist local designers, and to offer a location in which designers can make money from their craft. Exhibitions, open only through guided tours in Spanish every half hour from 10 am to 8 pm, are shown in a back room made of brick, where you can see the old archways from Cortés's patio, which was built, in part, on top of Moctezuma's pyramid. The shop is open to the public.