Parque Centenario

What you are looking at. The garden was not always a square: for centuries it formed part of the atrium of the San Juan Bautista church, and the arcades along today's Avenida Francisco Sosa survive from that period, with indigenous-carved columns reused from the church's construction. It took its present name and layout in 1910, when it was laid out as a garden for the centenary of Independence under Porfirio Díaz. The coyote fountain that crowns it —Coyoacán's emblem— is the work of sculptor Gabriel Ponzanelli.

How it is used. It has been the meeting point of central Coyoacán for over a century and still works that way: cafés with tables under the arcades, ice-cream and candy-floss sellers, musicians, card readers, people sitting on the rim of the fountain. It runs straight into Jardín Hidalgo next door, with the Casa Municipal and the parish church alongside; the Mexican Craft Market is less than a hundred metres away.

When to go and how to get there. Saturday and Sunday afternoons are the liveliest and the most crowded; for photographs without the crush, come early on a weekday. Central Coyoacán has no metro of its own: Coyoacán and Viveros-Derechos Humanos stations on Line 3 are both about a twenty-minute walk, and the southern Turibús circuit stops at the corner of Tres Cruces.

Eating and drinking around it. The arcades and the streets immediately off the garden are where Coyoacán eats: churros and hot chocolate, ice cream in fruit flavours you will not find at home, and the tostada aisle of the Coyoacán market two blocks north. Cafés with outdoor tables ring the square, and the Casa Azul —Frida Kahlo's house— is a ten-minute walk away, which is why most visitors end up passing through here twice in the same afternoon.