You go to Mexico City thinking you have a plan. You’ve read the articles, bookmarked the recommendations, maybe even sketched out a loose itinerary. You land, drop your bags in Roma Norte—the kind of neighborhood where every building has a story and every café feels like it’s been waiting for you specifically—and then, pretty quickly, you realize: the city has other plans.
I stayed for three weeks. And three weeks is just long enough to realize you could stay forever and still barely scratch the surface.
Mexico City doesn’t just have art—it breathes it. It’s in the murals that wrap around buildings, the pop-up galleries behind nondescript doors, the fact that even a regular Tuesday can turn into an impromptu lecture about Diego Rivera.
I spent days wandering through Museo Nacional de Antropología, where the past is meticulously preserved in glass cases, each artifact whispering that time is both impossibly vast and shockingly close. Then there’s Museo de Arte Moderno, which is sort of the opposite—modern Mexican art shouting in bright colors and abstract forms, asking you to reconsider what you thought you knew.
And the galleries? The Olivia Steele Foundation, where neon art hums with an energy that feels like it could power the whole city. Karen Huber, a space that could just as easily be in Berlin or New York, except it’s distinctly Mexican in the way it plays with boldness and subtlety all at once.
Art in Mexico City isn’t just confined to institutions—it spills into the streets, into the air. You step outside, and suddenly there’s a brass band playing in the park. There’s a man selling hand-painted postcards. There’s a poet, standing on a corner, reciting something that makes you stop, just for a second, before you disappear into the next moment.
Of course, you can’t spend three weeks here and not leave the city, not at least once. So, I did the thing—the full tourist pilgrimage: Teotihuacán, the Basílica de Guadalupe, and Tlatelolco.
Teotihuacán is one of those places where time folds in on itself. You stand at the base of the Pyramid of the Sun, staring up at something built over a thousand years ago, and you feel… small. But in a good way. In the way that reminds you there was history before you, and there will be history after you. That the stones will outlast us all, and that maybe that’s comforting.
At Guadalupe Shrine, I watched pilgrims kneel and shuffle across the floor, their devotion tangible. Faith, in its most physical form. And then there’s Tlatelolco—a place where three eras of Mexico sit side by side: pre-Hispanic ruins, a Spanish colonial church, and a modern apartment complex. Layers of history stacked like a palimpsest. A reminder that cities don’t replace themselves—they build on top of themselves, carrying their past with them.
Three weeks is enough time to settle in. To have a favorite café. To know which taco stand has the best suadero. To recognize the sound of the organ grinder who plays outside the same metro station every morning.
And it’s enough time to realize that Mexico City is not one thing. It’s not just art, or history, or street food, or chaos. It’s all of it at once. And if you let it, it pulls you in, gently at first, then all at once, until you can’t quite remember what life felt like before you were here.
And then, just like that, it’s time to leave.
But you know you’ll be back. Because some places don’t let go that easily.
