6 Best Places to Shop in San Angel, Mexico City

It's worth visiting San Ángel on a Saturday just to visit this upscale artisan market that's been going strong since 1960. Before you even make it into the grandiose colonial mansion, you'll encounter dozens of vendors selling crafts, wood carvings, embroidered clothing, leather goods, wooden masks, beads, amates (bark paintings), and trinkets at stalls just outside and around Plaza San Jacinto and adjacent Calle Benito Juárez. (Just be warned that more than a few businesses around Plaza San Jacinto, perhaps misleadingly, include the word "Bazaar" in their name.) Inside, on two levels that encircle a beautiful courtyard, are the generally top-quality—although higher priced—goods, including alebrijes (painted wooden animals from Oaxaca), miniature ofrendas, glassware, pottery, jewelry, fashion, furniture, kitchenware, and a smattering of gourmet goods and beauty products. There's also a decent traditional Mexican restaurant in the courtyard, which has a massive tree looming over it. The bazaar is open only on Saturday, but many shops sell their wares online and will ship abroad.

Beautiful handicrafts and folk art—including alebrijes animal figurines, carved masks, bracelets, ceramics, and Día de Muertos decor—are sold in the rooms of this alluring shop set inside a rambling 18th-century mansion with a gorgeous courtyard and exterior gardens. It's a few steps from Plaza San Jacinto, offering a bit of calm from the bustle of vendors found there.

Established in 1968, this highly respected, family-run artisan jewelry shop carries artful, silver-plated earrings, pendants, rings, necklaces, and other pieces, often in shapes and forms of objects associated with Mexico: nopales, hummingbirds, rabbits, and the like. There are additional locations in Centro Histórico as well as in Guadalajara.

Set around a modern, attractive courtyard landscaped with cacti and succulents, this fashionable cluster of boutiques contains some shops worth seeking out, especially the contemporary Mexican fashion label Pineda Covalin, known for its colorful-print handbags, shoes, scarves, and neckties, and Casa Mendiola, with its selection of stylish housewares crafted by artisans from throughout the country. A jewelry shop and a couple of other clothiers round out mix, and there's also a café and rooftop bar, both of which have lovely settings if fairly ordinary food and drinks.