13 travels · Cities are discovered on foot. Ideas to stroll around CDMX. 

Mexico City on foot: thirteen walks that work

This is a city that reads badly on a map and well on a pavement. It is also too big to walk end to end, so the trick is picking the handful of districts built for walking and doing them properly — which is what these thirteen ideas are for.

The historic quarters. The centre around the Zócalo, with the Plaza de Santo Domingo and its scribes; Coyoacán and San Ángel, both cobbled, both colonial, both in the south; and the Calzada de los Misterios, the old pilgrim route to Guadalupe.

The modern ones. The Condesa and the Roma, laid out in the 1920s with tree-lined medians that still define how the neighbourhoods are used. Tlatelolco, where a pre-Hispanic plaza, a colonial church and 1960s housing blocks stand on the same square. And the lava gardens of the Espacio Escultórico at the university, a landscape nothing else resembles.

Walking in this city. Pavements in the old centre are narrow and uneven; wear real shoes. Allow for the altitude — above 2,200 metres you tire sooner than you expect. Mornings are clear and cool, afternoons from June to September usually bring rain, and the sun is strong all year.