What kind of neighbourhood it is. Escandón sits between Tacubaya and the Condesa, and it is the quiet, unrenovated cousin of both. The land was part of the enormous Hacienda de la Condesa, owned by the Escandón family who gave the colonia its name, and it filled up during the Porfirian boom with the houses of the country's first big bourgeoisie. In the 1930s it became the first subdivided development of its kind in the city.
What to look at. The architecture, which was never unified and is the better for it: art déco, Californian colonial and neocolonial buildings sitting side by side along the same street. The Edificio Martí, built in the early 1930s, is the one to seek out —genuinely unusual for its time. Walk Calle José Martí for the best concentration.
Why people come. Seafood and cantinas. Escandón filled with marisquerías and old drinking houses, and some of the most iconic cantinas in the city are here: an afternoon on José Martí gives you both a good meal and the feel of twentieth-century Mexican nightlife, at a fraction of Condesa prices.
Getting around. Patriotismo station on metro Line 9 is inside the colonia and Tacubaya —the interchange of Lines 1, 7 and 9— is on its western edge, so it is very well connected. The Condesa and Chapultepec are both walkable from here.
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