Mexico City

Roma–Condesa:la ciudad que se puso de moda

The city that became fashionable

5 moments: 5 moments
1.7 km on foot: 1.7 km on foot

Roma and Condesa are two neighborhoods invented at the beginning of the last century and now sold as a single idea: a place where you live, eat and work with pleasure. This route does not explain why it became fashionable. It explains what was built here, who lived in it, what happened to the value of the land, and what questions a city leaves behind when it rebuilds itself to be lived in.

El recorrido son 1.7 kilometros a pie, de La Romita a Parque Mexico, con una comida en el camino. Se hace en unas tres horas y media sin correr.
La comida es una parte del recorrido, no una pausa: esta en la calle que se esta contando, en la misma cuadra.
Los horarios de las taquerias y del recinto son los publicados por cada uno. La fila depende del dia y de la hora.
Lo que se documenta y lo que se observa van separados en cada momento. Lo que no esta verificado aparece como pendiente, nunca rellenado.
La comparacion con otras capitales latinoamericanas es por dimensiones concretas, no una equivalencia entre barrios.

The city that was already here

La Romita

Plaza de la Romita, colonia Roma

≈ 30 min in this moment

The name of the city youngest district comes from a much older place. Before the planned streets and the Porfirian facades, this was a village: Aztacalco, in the house of the herons. When the neighborhood was laid out in 1902, the village did not disappear: it stayed, with its square, its small chapel and its people, and the neighborhood was built around and beside it.

Operational note. The square is small and driving access is easy in the middle, but the median of Chapultepec avenue, half a block away, is the widest and noisiest road around. Better to arrive on Orizaba.

¿Qué había aquí antes de que existiera una colonia?

The village before the neighborhood

The settlement had a pre-Hispanic name: Aztacalco, "in the house of the herons". On a chapel of the Nativity raised in 1530 by friar Pedro de Gante, the first Indigenous people were baptized around 1537, according to the city chronicle. Its territory was the grazing ground: pasture, cattle and the contract of the "obligado" who supplied meat to the capital. When the 1856 disentailment put communal property up for sale, neighbors of the Romita bought their land for very small sums, and over time those lands became part of the Condesa estate, one of the most prosperous of its time.

Qué observar

The square keeps a village scale: low houses around it, a small chapel at the end and a single cluster of trees.
The ahuehuete trees that flanked the atrium are still around; two of them appear in Los Olvidados, by Luis Buñuel, filmed here in 1950.
The chapel is visible from the street, six steps above the square: you have to climb up to get in.

The name

Because a priest said that the cypress-lined causeway leading to the chapel looked like the avenues of Rome, Italy, the place came to be known as the Romita. The name is documented from 1752. When the neighborhood was laid out in 1902, the founders chose the name Roma, and the village diminutive remained as the exception: a place with its own name inside a neighborhood named after a European capital.

Qué observar

The church is now called San Francisco Javier: the Jesuits arrived in 1929 and dedicated it to their saint.
The church was declared a monument in 1944, and the square was recognized as part of the city cultural heritage in 1980.

Roma, 1902

The city that wanted to be modern

Plaza Río de Janeiro y sus alrededor

≈ 40 min in this moment

On January 24, 1902, Edward Walter Orrin asked the City Council for permission to subdivide the Romita grazing lands. He did not ask for lots alone: he committed to drainage, paving, potable water and sidewalks, and to give up land for gardens, churches, a police station, a market and a school. The streets would carry the names of cities, in memory of the tours of his circus, where the draw was the clown Bell and where the circus had been most applauded.

Operational note. Plaza Rio de Janeiro works as a pass-through: it is a neighborhood square, with benches and dogs. Two or three minutes are enough to see the building and move on. Around lunch, the corner tables fill up.

¿Se puede construir una colonia para la ciudad que se quiere tener?

A subdivision with obligations

The lots were large: between one thousand and five thousand square meters, with fronts of twenty to thirty-seven meters and depths of fifty-two to sixty. At twenty-five pesos per square meter, the result is the big houses with gardens and the first apartment buildings in the city. The neighborhood was drawn as boulevards: the avenues Orizaba, Veracruz and Jalisco, later Orizaba, Veracruz and Alvaro Obregon. In 1905, the two developers asked the City Council to name their streets after states and territories, because the numeric street naming introduced in 1887 had proved confusing.

Qué observar

The fronts of the Porfirian houses measure several times the width of a street today: the block scale belongs to another century.
Chamfered corners and porches mix with apartment buildings from the thirties to the fifties.
Plaza Rio de Janeiro was created in 1903, at Durango and Orizaba, on land the developers donated for green space.

The name of the square and of the building

The square was first called Parque Roma, then Parque Orizaba, and in 1922 it became Plaza Rio de Janeiro at the initiative of Jose Vasconcelos, then Secretary of Public Education, possibly because of the centenary of Brazilian independence. The residents did not accept it. Next to it, on the corner, the brick building that gives it its name was built in 1908 by the British engineer Regis A. Pigeon, who also designed the Red Castle in Colonia Juarez. Its tower with a conical roof looks like a witch hat and its openings suggest a face: that is why everyone calls it the House of the Witches. Art deco details were added to its interior in the thirties.

Qué observar

The conical roof of the tower is visible from Orizaba, above the square's trees.
The bronze David in the fountain was installed in 1976, many years after the square itself.
The popular name (the witches) winning over the official one (Rio de Janeiro building) is the neighborhood rule: the nickname rules.

Plaza Rio de Janeiro, con el arbolado y las casas porfirianas que la rodean. — Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Álvaro Obregón, the main street

The neighborhood that changes value

Avenida Álvaro Obregón, Roma Norte

≈ 45 min in this moment

Alvaro Obregon was called Jalisco and it was a dirt road with horse stables. Today it is the boulevard of the neighborhood: the median, the restaurants, the bookshops, the coworkings and the terraces. What changed was not only the commerce: it changed for whom the street is. And to understand it, it helps to look at two different markets, because they do not move the same way.

Operational note. The avenue has three lanes each way and traffic is heavy in the afternoon. The median is the safe place to stop. To eat, it is better to arrive before nine at night on Friday and Saturday.

¿Qué pasa con una calle cuando su valor cambia de manos?

Two markets, two speeds

On the sales side, the average ticket in the area went from 5,152 to 5,716 pesos per square meter between 2019 and 2024, 11 percent: in line with inflation, according to a Metric Analysis study using Sociedad Hipotecaria Federal and INEGI data. On the rental side, the story is different: asking prices on property portals rose more than 80 percent in Roma Norte and close to 88 percent in Condesa between the pandemic and the first half of 2025, while the average labor income in the city grew by around 25 percent. New supply concentrated at the top of the market: the mid segment fell 51 percent and the semi-luxury segment grew 56 percent. The neighborhood did not simply become more expensive across the board: the edge of the market moved, and what was in the middle fell out of it.

Qué observar

It is the same Porfirian median, with the same geometry, and yet the land is worth something else: the value changed underneath the facades.
A single eating place can carry two price codes on the same block: the menu and the rent of the premises.
Attic rooms and balconies rented by the day live alongside family businesses that have been here for decades.

Food, half a block away

On the same block of Alvaro Obregon there are three taquerias that tell different stories about the city. The oldest opened in 1996 and still serves trompo, suadero and steamed beef head, with a soup of the day on the house on weekdays. Orinoco, ten meters away, invented "orinificacion" in 2015, the market taquería look with tiles, metal and cumbia, and it sets the rhythm of the night: the queue gets long between nine and midnight. The Atarantados arrived from Monterrey in 2024 with four trompos and a franchise format. Eating here is observing the neighborhood: three prices, three publics and three ways of reading the same street.

Qué observar

Timing matters: the hours run from 1:00 pm into the night, but the queue changes with the day and the hour.
No claim is made that a place is empty or full: the wait depends on the day and the hour, and the published information changes every week.
In all three, the taco is eaten standing or on the curb: the food is part of the street, not of an interior.

The technology layer

An Amaxing hypothesis, stated as a hypothesis: Roma resembles a Latin American San Francisco not for its technology but for the way it works. A small team here does not go to a corporate office: it uses a cafe table, a coworking in a Porfirian house, or a bar terrace. It is a remote-work laboratory, not an innovation center. What is documented is the effect on the shops: the arrival of shared workspaces and higher-end restaurants where the fondas used to be, and the growth of short-term rental platforms. The link between one thing and the other is an editorial hypothesis, not a measured fact.

Qué observar

Cafes with sockets, tables taken by people with laptops, and the same place that in the afternoon is an office.
Coworkings such as WeWork in Parque Espana, Iknal, Openhub or Uotan have their own verifiable address and hours.
No claim is made that this is the country main technology hub: there is no evidence for that.

Panoramica de la calle Medellin y la Avenida Alvaro Obregon, en la colonia Roma. — Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Hipódromo, 1925

Walking a different geometry

Avenida Ámsterdam, colonia Hipódromo

≈ 25 min in this moment

Condesa was not laid out as a grid. It was laid out as a race track. The racecourse opened on those lands in 1910; in 1924 or 1925, the De la Lama and Basurto company bought the land from the Jockey Club and architect José Luis Cuevas adapted the subdivision to the elliptical shape of the track instead of imposing the square blocks of the time. That is where a street that never quite straightens comes from.

Operational note. Avenida Amsterdam is one-way in several stretches and it is the most walked street in the neighborhood. It is best crossed at the roundabouts: they are the only wide parts.

¿Qué pasa cuando una ciudad nueva adopta la forma de otra cosa?

The track that lasted two years

The Condesa racecourse opened on October 23, 1910, with Porfirio Diaz at the head of it. Its track is today Avenida Amsterdam, which worked as a track for barely two years: the revolution and then the end of racing in 1913 left it as a track for other things, athletics and motor competitions, until the land was sold in the twenties. The 1910 contract included a clause: if after fifteen years the Jockey Club stopped using the land, it could subdivide it, but it had to donate sixty thousand square meters for a park. That park is the condition by which Parque Mexico exists today.

Qué observar

Walk the oval: it is the only way to check that the blocks are not squares.
The Popocatepetl roundabout to the north and the Ixtaccíhuatl and Citlaltépetl ones to the south are where the line closes.
The line continues on the Mazatlan, Durango, Alfonso Reyes and Veracruz avenues: the same curve, another name.

The geometry that was planted

The design of Parque Mexico is attributed to Leonardo Noriega and the engineer Javier Stavoli, and the forum that crowns it to the same, in 1927, with reliefs by Roberto Montenegro. It is not a square garden: it is a nine-hectare landscape study with an elliptical layout, ponds, waterfalls and winding paths, unlike the Alameda. The whole neighborhood is now one of the greenest in the city, with 40 percent of its surface in green space, and 250 buildings listed as artistic or historic monuments. In 1936 and 1937 Luis Barragan built two houses on Parque Mexico avenue, 141 and 143, published in Architectural Record.

Qué observar

Barragan's houses are the sober facades, with a long horizontal window on the first floor.
The greenery is not decorative: it is 40 percent of the neighborhood surface, and the 1910 contract required it.
Parque Espana, from 1921, is the other green piece of the neighborhood, and also by Cuevas.

Avenida Amsterdam, con su trazado curvo en la colonia Hipodromo Condesa. — Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Foro Lindbergh en el Parque Mexico, con su estilo art deco. — Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The end of the route

The city as a shared space

Parque México, colonia Hipódromo

≈ 35 min in this moment

Parque Mexico opened in December 1927 and its official name is Parque General San Martin, a gesture the Foreign Ministry proposed to the city in order to thank Argentina. The name people use comes from something else: the avenue that surrounds it. Its forum, the Lindbergh Forum, was built the same year and got that name in January 1928, after the nonstop flight through which two countries wanted to be greeted. The park has plaques explaining how to behave in it. It was built as education, not as decoration.

Operational note. The closing works better from the forum, looking toward the pond, not from the Michoacan entrance. If the group is large, it is worth walking around the park before sitting down.

¿Quién puede estar en un parque que la ciudad construyó con reglas?

A park that teaches

The park comes with a program: it was the first green space in the city conceived with an architectural design, with fountains, ponds, waterfalls and bridges that imitate the European garden. The plaques mounted along the paths are not decoration: they explain the rules of living together, as in an outdoor school. The Fountain of the Jars, at the Michoacan entrance, is by Jose Maria Fernandez Urbina, the same man who restored the Angel of Independence after the 1958 earthquake. And the clock in the tower, with its art deco ironwork, used to play classical music to mark the hour.

Qué observar

The forum has five monumental pillars, and the dressing rooms carry the reliefs of tragedy and comedy by Roberto Montenegro.
The pond has ducks and swans, and the planting includes Lebanese cedars, mimosas, palms and bamboo.
The concrete benches imitate small wooden cabins: the park was designed as if it were the countryside.

The question that remains

The question is not whether Roma became fashionable: that already happened and it can be measured. The question is what was paid for it, and who paid. In other Latin American capitals the same tension was resolved differently: in Ipanema, with height facing the sea; in Palermo, with streets that specialized and towers; in Providencia, with the suburb; in San Isidro, with the tower and the offices; in Barranco and Lince, with the river edge and tourism. None of those neighborhoods is equivalent to this one, and the academic literature itself insists there is no single Latin American model of gentrification. What can be said is that everywhere the question of who gets to stay comes with the same phrase: the price of belonging. Parque Mexico was built for people to live near, not for people to visit. Three and a half hours later, that is still the question.

Qué observar

Look at who is sitting down at this hour: it is the most honest observation one can make in a public space.
This is the only stop on the route that belongs to nobody and that everyone uses without paying.
In the nineties a underground parking was proposed here: neighborhood opposition is what saved it.

Three taquerías, one block

On the same block of Álvaro Obregón, ten meters from each other. Three prices, three publics and three ways of reading the same street. The queue depends on the day and the hour: the wait is not published, it is lived.

The first one

Taquería Álvaro Obregón

Abierta desde 1996

Address: Av. Álvaro Obregón 90, Roma Norte
Hours: Lunes a sábado de 13:00 a 04:45; domingo de 13:00 a 22:15

The one that invented the style

Taquería Orinoco

La que puso el nombre: en 2015 inventó la "orinificación", el estilo de taquería de mercado con azulejos, mobiliario de metal y cumbia

Address: Av. Álvaro Obregón 100, a diez metros de la anterior
Hours: Lunes a miércoles de 13:00 a 03:30; jueves hasta 04:00; viernes y sábado hasta 05:30; domingo de 13:00 a 03:30

The one that came from elsewhere

Tacos Atarantados

Franquicia regiomontana: abrió su primera sucursal en Monterrey en 2022 y llegó a la Roma Norte en 2024

Address: Córdoba 113, Roma Norte, a una cuadra del camellón
Hours: Todos los días de 13:00 a 01:00; viernes y sábado hasta las 02:00

Hours and menus verified on the official sites. Prices change: the current menu of the first taquería lists 24 to 33 pesos for a suadero, longaniza or pastor taco, and 155 pesos for the mixed trompo order at the Atarantados. If you are going to eat, it is better to arrive before nine at night.

What is observed, what is documented and what is missing

Separate lo que la historia documenta de lo que el lugar cuenta. Abre cada tarjeta para leerla; ninguna esconde información que necesites para seguir el recorrido.

Lo que se observaWhat is observed first hand
The scale of the village square, the dimensions of the facades, the conical roof of the tower, the median, the oval of the avenue, the five pillars of the forum and the park plaques. It is the part of the route that depends on no source.
DocumentadoWhat the sources document
Pendiente de documentarWhat still needs checking

Sources

Dates, architecture and prices come from official city information, UNAM theses, INAH documentation and analyses using INEGI and Sociedad Hipotecaria Federal data. Rents are asking prices, not closed deals: they are published with their source and date.

Photography

The 24 images in this Journey come from Wikimedia Commons, with a verified free licence and individual credit under each one. No photograph from another neighborhood is presented as if it were Roma-Condesa.

Data verified on 2026-10-21. The points marked as pending have not been verified: they are published as pending, not filled in.

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La Romita

The city that wanted to be modern

The neighborhood that changes value

Walking a different geometry

The city as a shared space

Three taquerías, one block

Taquería Álvaro Obregón

Taquería Orinoco

Tacos Atarantados

The routeA linear route of 1.7 kilometers, from La Romita to Parque Mexico, with a meal along the way. It takes about three and a half hours without rushing.

What is observed, what is documented and what is missing

Sources

Photography

Support the project