Mexico City: Four hours flying (give or take) from New York or San Francisco (respectively), but few people you ask seem to have visited.  Mexico City is a world class destination with a unique past. You can get a first grip on that history very readily. Start at the Zocalo, where the cathedral originally constructed by the Spanish between 1573 and 1813 dominates the north side.

There is a decent itinerary that runs you from the Zocalo down to Chapultepec Park, which could take between a half and a full day.

Fine Arts Museum; Palacio de Bellas Artes.

10 minutes walk west from the Zocalo, the Bellas Artes is worth a look not only for its Spanish colonial-era collection but also some great murals. “Man, Controller of the Universe” by Diego Rivera is the place to start, derived from a similar commission from 1933 at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York. A worker, in the center, controls the forces of capitalism (at left) and of communism (at right). The original in New York was destroyed, mostly because the sponsors at Radio Corporation of America disliked the Communist themes present in the mural. Subsequently, Rivera looked to recreate it in Mexico City.

Rivera was a Communist and while Trotsky gets second billing on the right after Lenin,  you don’t see Stalin. While it’s well known that Trotsky sought political refuge in Mexico City from Stalin’s regime, and was assassinated there in 1940, it’s also notable that Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo sponsored his arrival in 1936 and housed him for three years. This mural pre-dates that relationship, with Trotsky in exile in France at that time.

Rivera was a keen commentator on Mexican history and his other murals line the same gallery.

There is a large set of traditional colonial-era artifacts and art, including Velazquez, Zurbaran and el Greco.

Diego Rivera Mural Museum.

Just west of the Bellas Artes in Alameda Park is the Diego Rivera mural museum. The main attraction is the mural “Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central,” painted in 1946-47, which was installed in a hotel restaurant that was damaged in the 1985 earthquake and then moved to the museum. The mural depicts key people from Mexican history, around an early-20th century promenade in the park. At the center is La Calavera Catrina, a female skeleton who is an image of death in Mexico and an icon of the Dia de los Muertos. On her left is the painter as a child and behind him, his wife, Frida Kahlo. 

There was a guitar concert performing on the Sunday visited, and they cranked it out.

The art of public protest continues to be developed, this on Reforma.

National Anthropological Museum.

At the west end of our tour, the anthropological museum located in Chapultepec Park is worth seeing to understand Mexico’s pre-Colombian history, particularly the origins and interaction of each of the dueling civilizations that made up the country. The Aztec Empire came to dominate the Valley of Mexico by the time of the arrival of the Spanish, is perhaps the best known, if only for that decisive point in history, and was a triple alliance of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan.

There is a very neat painting on pre-Colombian Mexico City in all it’s lakey majesty, and which helps explain why it now has such seismic issues.

You could easily spend a whole day there. Sundays are thoughtfully free entry.

If you have the time, a half-day trip out to the abandoned Mexica city of Tenochtitlan is well worth it. Take a hat, water and sun block.

Whether or not you are muraled-out, you can have just one more at the airport departures area.

Y adios! If you are heading points North, try and sit on the right side of the aircraft to catch the volcanoes east of Mexico City.