Mexico City: best bits

Mexico City, the largest metropolis in the western hemisphere, is where up to 19 million inhabitants call home. As this would suggest, it's a high-energy, often frenzied hive of colour, traffic, music and people.
There's not a street that can be walked down without encountering some sort of activity, as the daily jostle of pavement hawkers, taxi drivers, shoeshine boys and road cops runs its course.

It's a mixture of everywhere you've ever been – the modern with the historic, the rich with the poor, the shiny with the filthy and the deafening with the peaceful. But the city's sheer size can be a deterrent for time-pressed visitors, so it often gets treated as a stopover en route to elsewhere. With this in mind, here's an idea of how to get the most from a short stay without getting too leg-weary.

Afternoon: Start explorations at the open expanse of the Zocalo, the city's sweeping central square. Call in at the Palacio Nacional, where the offices of the president are fringed by a series of interconnecting gardens. Its prime draw is an astonishing collection of murals by national treasure Diego Rivera. The largest, dwarfing the entire main staircase, gives a vividly detailed history of the country from its Aztec roots to the present day. Fittingly, just a minute's walk takes you to two more keystones of the city's heritage - the excavated Templo Mayor, where the Aztecs first constructed their island domain (the city originally being wetlands - many buildings are part-'sunk' as a result), and the lofty Catedral Metropolitana, built by the Spanish in the 1520s.

Evening: After sampling the colonial bustle of the Centro Historico, head up to one the roof terrace bars on the west side of the Zocalo for unbeatable views of the pomp and ritual of the daily 6pm flag ceremony.

Then take a 5-minute taxi to Plaza Garibaldi, a perennial tourist hotspot – but no less authentic for that – thronged with dapper mariachi bands for hire. Watching the action unfold over salsa-rich tortillas and a few bottles of cold Corona is a heady experience to be enjoyed at length.

Next: Mexico City stopover - day two