Secrets of southern Mexico

Think you know your tlayudas from your tetelas? The world’s first Michelin-starred taco stand can be found in Mexico City, where a culinary crash course fuels an expansive art and design scene heavily influenced by pioneers like the late, great Frida Kahlo. At the city’s center is the Templo Mayor, the ancient center of the Aztec universe; in the artsy streets of Roma, Condesa and Polanco, grand townhouses repose in dappled shade. Cutting-edge museums chart everything from Trotsky to tequila, with the Palacio de Bellas Artes a high temple to fine art. Beneath the ornate bell towers of the Metropolitan Cathedral sprawls the historic Zócal plaza. 

Beneath the gaze of La Malinche volcano, Puebla is a grand example of colonial architecture near the Aztec ruins of Cholula to the west. In the UNESCO-listed center, lavish churches stand tall over handsome streets, busy market stalls and pink, lime and marigold-yellow townhouses. A recent string of newly-opened hotels and restaurants have put the city on the map, and so too has the International Museum of the Baroque, which cuts a sinuous, modernist dash on the outskirts of town, its galleries devoted to that illustrious movement of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Oaxaca embodies Mexico at its most quintessential and classic. Between the Pacific Ocean and rugged horizons of the sierra, the grand seats of Aztec power stand beside baroque, Spanish-era churches. Flor de Piña folk dancers twirl their skirts as indigenous merchants lay out hand-woven wares, whilst stalls serve up fresh fruit and piping-hot tlayudas laden with local quesillo cheese.