It started as a hacienda. The Zona Rosa goes back to the late 1880s, when the De la Teja hacienda was broken up into lots and the colonia Juárez was laid out. Wealthy families built mansions and small palaces here, imitating the European life they admired: French facades, Spanish colonial touches, gothic villas, art nouveau and belle époque detail. Several of those buildings are still standing on Hamburgo, Londres and Liverpool.
How it became something else. Through the 1950s and 1960s the grand houses gave way to cafes, galleries, restaurants, boutiques and nightclubs. The neighbourhood turned bohemian and avant-garde and acquired a nickname: the Mexican Montmartre. Writers, intellectuals and artists worked out of it, and it became the place where a younger generation pushed sexual liberation into public view.
The date that matters. In 1974 "El Nueve" opened, the first gay nightclub in Mexico City, and the Zona Rosa became the first part of the country where that freedom had an address. It is still the centre of LGBT life in Mexico, concentrated on Amberes and Niza.
What came out of these streets. Café Tacvba and Maldita Vecindad played their earliest gigs here, and Carlos Fuentes drew on the neighbourhood for parts of La región más transparente.
What it is today. Dozens of bars and clubs within a few walkable blocks, covering every genre; some of the best commercial galleries in the country; a Korean quarter around Hamburgo and Florencia; and enough surviving Porfirian architecture to make the walk between them worth doing in daylight too.
Practical notes. Metro Insurgentes, line 1, comes out in the middle of it. Everything is on foot; parking is not worth attempting. For the trip home after midnight, use an app taxi.
All day
Col. Juárez Zona Rosa 06600
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