Explore Mexico City

The cathedral on the north side of the Zócalo, built in stages from 1573 to 1813 over part of the Mexica sacred precinct. Its facade mixes Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical work; inside are the gilded Altar of the Kings, sixteen chapels and two organs, and the adjoining Metropolitan Tabernacle.

The seat of Mexico's federal executive on the east side of the Zócalo, built from 1522 on the site of Moctezuma's palace. Its main staircase and courtyard corridors carry Diego Rivera's murals of the history of Mexico, painted between 1929 and 1951; visits depend on access granted by the presidency.

A former Jesuit college in the historic centre, rebuilt in the early 18th century around three courtyards and later the National Preparatory School. Its walls carry the first murals of the Mexican muralist movement, by José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and others; it is now a museum with exhibitions.

Mexico's national collection of Mexican art from the 16th century to 1954, in the former Palace of Communications on Calle Tacuba, built in 1904–11 by Silvio Contri. Its galleries run from colonial religious painting to José María Velasco's landscapes and works by Rivera and Kahlo; Tolsá's statue of Charles IV stands in front.

Mexico's national theatre and art museum beside the Alameda Central, begun in 1904 by Adamo Boari and finished in 1934 with an Art Deco interior. Its marble exterior and tiled domes enclose a theatre with a Tiffany glass curtain and galleries with murals by Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros and Tamayo.

A museum on Plaza Garibaldi, opened in 2010, on the history and making of tequila and mezcal, from the agave fields to distillation. Its rooms show tools, bottles and labels, and the visit ends with a tasting; the roof terrace looks over the square where mariachi bands play.

A museum of 20th-century Mexican art in Chapultepec Park, opened in 1964 in two round glass-walled buildings by Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Rafael Mijares. The collection includes Frida Kahlo's The Two Fridas and works by Rivera, Siqueiros, Tamayo, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, with a sculpture garden.

A museum of contemporary art in Chapultepec Park, founded by the painter Rufino Tamayo and his wife Olga and opened in 1981 in a terraced concrete building by Teodoro González de León and Abraham Zabludovsky. It shows Tamayo's collection of international modern art and changing exhibitions.

Mexico's national museum of archaeology and ethnography, opened in 1964 in Chapultepec Park in a building by Pedro Ramírez Vázquez. Its 22 halls cover the cultures of ancient Mexico, from Teotihuacan and the Maya to the Mexica, whose Sun Stone stands in the Mexica hall, and the country's living Indigenous peoples.

The shrine at the foot of Tepeyac hill where, by tradition, the Virgin appeared to Juan Diego in 1531. The round basilica by Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, consecrated in 1976, holds the cloak bearing her image; beside it stand the old basilica of 1709, chapels and a path up the hill.

An art museum founded by Carlos Slim and named after his late wife, in a building by Fernando Romero at Plaza Carso, opened in 2011 and clad in 16,000 hexagonal aluminium tiles. Six floors show Mexican and European art, from Old Masters to one of the largest collections of Rodin sculpture outside France.

The house in Coyoacán where Leon Trotsky lived in exile with Natalia Sedova from 1939 and was killed in 1940. Rooms and his study are kept as they were, with bullet marks from an earlier attack; his grave is in the garden, and a modern wing holds exhibitions on the right of asylum.

The cobalt-blue house in Coyoacán where Frida Kahlo was born, lived with Diego Rivera and died in 1954. Rivera gave the house and its contents to become a museum, opened in 1958: her studio, bedroom and kitchen, paintings by Kahlo and Rivera, folk art and her clothes.

Two functionalist houses in San Ángel designed by Juan O'Gorman for Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, built in 1931–32 and linked by a bridge between their roofs. Rivera's red house keeps his studio with his brushes, Judas figures and furniture; Kahlo's blue house shows how the couple lived and worked.

A museum designed by Diego Rivera in Coyoacán to house his collection of pre-Hispanic art, built of dark volcanic stone in a style recalling Mesoamerican temples and opened in 1964, after his death. Its rooms hold thousands of ancient figures; the roof terrace looks over the lava field of El Pedregal.