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Mexico

8 city guides · North America

Cities in Mexico (8)

North America
🇲🇽 Mexico

Acapulco

Acapulco was once the most glamorous resort in the Americas — the cliff divers of La Quebrada, the sweeping bay, the celebrities, the Frank Sinatra connections and the old town Zócalo all speak of the 1950s–70s golden era. Today Acapulco is recovering from a difficult period and 2023 Hurricane Otis, but the bay is still beautiful, La Quebrada still magnificent, and the city's Mexican food — ceviche, pozole rojo, chilate — is excellent. Day 3 explores the Costa Chica beach towns south of the bay.

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North America
🇲🇽 Mexico

Cancun

Cancún is Mexico's most visited city — 888,000 permanent residents, 6+ million annual tourists — a planned resort city built from scratch in 1970 on a Caribbean barrier island of the Yucatán Peninsula. The Hotel Zone (Zona Hotelera) is a 22km strip of hotels, shopping malls, and beach clubs on a narrow island between the Caribbean Sea (on the eastern side — aquamarine, warm, gentle waves) and the Laguna Nichupté (on the western side — mangroves and flamingo habitat). The beach (Playa Delfines, the furthest and least commercial, is the best free option) is genuinely world-class. But Cancún's enduring value is as a base for Yucatán Peninsula exploration: Chichén Itzá (one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, UNESCO, 200km west — 2.5 hours by bus), Tulum (the clifftop Mayan ruins above the Caribbean, 130km south, 1.5 hours), and the cenotes (natural freshwater sinkholes in the limestone of the Yucatán — Ik Kil, Dos Ojos, Gran Cenote — with crystal-clear water and stalactites, 10–15 minutes from any Yucatán highway). Best months: November–April (dry, 25–28°C, low humidity).

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North America
🇲🇽 Mexico

Guadalajara

Guadalajara is Mexico's second city and its most culturally Mexican — the birthplace of Mariachi, Tequila, the Jarabe Tapatío (Mexico's national dance), and charrería (Mexican rodeo tradition), with a population of 5.3 million in the metropolitan area and a centro histórico so well preserved it makes Mexico City's feel compromised. The Cathedral anchors the historic centre between four plazas (Plaza de la Liberación, Plaza de la Rotonda, Plaza Guadalajara, Plazuela de los Laureles) that together form one of the largest civic spaces in Latin America. Hospicio Cabañas, an 1801 orphanage painted floor-to-ceiling by José Clemente Orozco in 1938–1939, is the Sistine Chapel of Mexican muralism. Tlaquepaque (a 20-minute bus ride) is Mexico's best craft village. And Tequila — the actual town — is 60 kilometres away on the Tequila Express train. Best time to visit: October–November (Día de Muertos) or March–May (dry, not too hot).

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North America
🇲🇽 Mexico

Mexico City

Mexico City (Ciudad de México, CDMX — population 21 million in the metro area, the largest city in North America and the second-largest in the world) is built on the dried bed of Lake Texcoco, where the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán stood until Hernán Cortés destroyed it in 1521 and built the Spanish colonial city on top of it — which is why Mexico City sinks 10cm per year (the lakebed clay compresses) and why you can see Aztec ruins emerging from beneath Catholic churches. CDMX is simultaneously the cultural capital of Latin America (more museums than any other city in the world after London and Moscow), the food capital of the Americas (Mexican cuisine is UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage and Mexico City's tacos and tortas are as sophisticated as any cuisine on earth), and one of the most dynamic, infuriating, magical and complicated cities on the planet. A visitor who stays only in Polanco or the Centro Histórico has seen almost none of it.

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North America
🇲🇽 Mexico

Monterrey

Monterrey is Mexico's most industrialised and wealthiest city — the financial capital of the north and the home of CEMEX, FEMSA and the multinational corporations that make it the country's engine of manufacturing and innovation. Set in a dramatic bowl of the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains, Monterrey's Cerro de la Silla (Saddle Mountain) is as iconic to the city as Vesuvius is to Naples. The historic centro histórico around the Macroplaza — one of the largest plazas in Latin America — holds the Metropolitan Cathedral, the Government Palace and the Museo de Historia Mexicana, while the Barrio Antiguo adjacent to it is Mexico's most vibrant nightlife quarter outside Mexico City. Monterrey was founded 1596 and has always been proudly different from the rest of Mexico — more American in its business culture, more Norteño in its music (conjunto, norteño and grupero), more carnivore in its cuisine (cabrito — roasted kid goat — is the non-negotiable dish). The Fundidora steel mill, a UNESCO-listed industrial heritage site, has been reimagined as the city's largest park, with the Horno 3 steelmaking museum as its centrepiece.

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North America
🇲🇽 Mexico

Puebla

Puebla de Zaragoza is Mexico's fourth largest city (1.5 million in the city, 3.5 million in the metro) and the capital of Puebla state — a city founded by the Spanish in 1531 as Ciudad de los Ángeles (City of the Angels) at 2,135 m altitude on the Central Mexican Plateau, surrounded by four volcanoes (Popocatépetl at 5,426 m, Iztaccíhuatl at 5,230 m, La Malinche at 4,462 m, and Pico de Orizaba at 5,636 m — the highest peak in Mexico and the third highest in North America), and one of the best-preserved colonial cities in the Americas (UNESCO World Heritage 1987). The historic centre of Puebla has the second largest concentration of colonial Baroque architecture in Mexico (after Oaxaca) — 70 temples, 5 monasteries, 18 convents and 1,000+ colonial civil buildings within the historic centre; the Talavera tile tradition (brought by Dominican friars from Talavera de la Reina in Spain in the 16th century, now a Puebla specialty with UNESCO intangible heritage status) covers the church domes, facades and kitchens with brilliant polychrome geometric patterns. Puebla is the culinary capital of Mexico — the origin of two of Mexico's most celebrated dishes: mole poblano (the complex sauce of 30+ ingredients including chocolate, chilli, spices and turkey, created according to legend by the nuns of Santa Rosa convent in the 17th century) and chiles en nogada (the Mexican Independence Day dish: poblano chilli stuffed with picadillo of minced pork, fruit and nuts, covered in walnut cream sauce and garnished with pomegranate seeds and parsley — the white sauce, red pomegranate and green parsley representing the Mexican flag). The 5 de Mayo battle (May 5, 1862) — when a Mexican force under General Ignacio Zaragoza defeated a French Imperial army at the Battle of Puebla (the most celebrated military victory in Mexican history and the origin of the Cinco de Mayo holiday) — is commemorated with extraordinary civic pride in the city that bears Zaragoza's name.

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North America
🇲🇽 Mexico

Puerto Vallarta

Puerto Vallarta is Mexico's most authentic beach resort city — a city of 250,000 on Banderas Bay (the largest bay in Mexico, 42 km wide) on the Pacific coast of Jalisco state, that managed to grow from a fishing village to a major tourism destination (4 million visitors per year) while retaining the cobblestone streets, the red-tiled white-washed architecture, the malecón (seafront promenade) and the traditional Mexican character of its original town. The city's international fame began in 1963 when John Huston filmed "The Night of the Iguana" (with Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr) in the jungle above the city — Burton brought Elizabeth Taylor and the tabloid attention of their affair (during their first, and then second, marriages) put Puerto Vallarta on the world map; the house where Taylor lived is now a hotel (Casa Kimberly). Banderas Bay is the best whale watching location in Mexico — humpback whales migrate to the bay to breed (December–March) and the bay is their primary breeding ground in the eastern Pacific, with sightings of mother-calf pairs nearly guaranteed; other species include blue whales (Jan–Mar), orcas and bottlenose dolphins year-round. The old town (Zona Romántica, also called Colonia Emiliano Zapata) south of the Río Cuale has the finest concentration of galleries, seafood restaurants, bars and the famous "gay friendly" beach scene of Playa Los Muertos (Puerto Vallarta is the most LGBTQ+ welcoming beach destination in Mexico and the third most gay-friendly beach resort in the world). The Sierra Madre mountains descend to the ocean directly behind the city, creating a dramatic backdrop and enabling jungle adventure activities (canopy zip lines, ATV tours, river kayaking) within 30 minutes of the beach.

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North America
🇲🇽 Mexico

Veracruz

Veracruz (official name: Heroica, Leal e Insigne Ciudad de Veracruz; population 630,000 city, 900,000 metropolitan area; the main Pacific-Atlantic port of Mexico and the capital of the state of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico coast) is the oldest continuously inhabited European city in the Americas: Hernán Cortés landed here on Good Friday 1519 (naming the settlement "La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz" — the Rich Town of the True Cross) and within two years the Aztec Empire had fallen. Veracruz is the city through which virtually all the silver of the New Spain viceroyalty was shipped to Spain for three centuries (the silver of Zacatecas and Guanajuato, the gold of Oaxaca — the treasure fleets (flotas) assembled here annually and sailed across the Gulf to Havana and then to Seville; the San Juan de Ulúa island fortress built from 1568 controlled the entire trade). The city has the most African-influenced culture of any Mexican city — the enslaved West Africans (primarily from the Slave Coast — modern Benin, Nigeria and Togo) who arrived to replace the decimated indigenous workforce in the sugar cane plantations of the Veracruz coast created the son jarocho music (the guitar-driven dance music of Veracruz, derived from African, Spanish and indigenous rhythms — "La Bamba" (the famous folk song later recorded by Ritchie Valens in 1958) is a son jarocho), the marimba music (the African xylophone tradition adapted to Mexican instruments and the Caribbean scales), the Afro-Mexican cuisine and the Carnaval de Veracruz (the most spectacular Carnival in Mexico, the second most important in Latin America after Rio de Janeiro, dating from colonial times when African slaves were given freedom to celebrate the three days before Ash Wednesday). Veracruz is also the gateway to El Tajín (the UNESCO World Heritage Totonac pyramid complex 230 km north — the most important pre-Columbian archaeological site on the Gulf Coast of Mexico).

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