54 top experiences · Ground breaking arts and cultural movements since the 50s.

What this section covers. The city's ground-breaking side — the arts and cultural movements that started here and travelled.

What Mexico City actually invented. Muralism, from 1921 onwards: Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros turned public walls into the principal medium of an entire national project, and the results are still on the Palacio Nacional, Bellas Artes and San Ildefonso. Mexican modernism: Juan O'Gorman built the first modernist house in Latin America here in 1931, and Luis Barragán's work won him the Pritzker. Surrealism in exile: Breton called Mexico the most surrealist country in the world, and Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington did their major work here after fleeing Europe.

Where the current wave is. The Roma and Juárez for galleries, design and independent publishing; the MUAC at the university for serious contemporary art; the Jumex in Polanco; and the design studios that have made Mexico City a reference point in furniture, ceramics and graphics over the past decade.

And the street. One of the largest and most tolerated mural and street-art scenes anywhere, concentrated in the Roma, Doctores and along the Cablebus corridors in Iztapalapa.

Practical notes. Galleries close on Mondays. Barragán's house is World Heritage and by appointment only — book weeks ahead.