Colonia Roma

Where it sits. Colonia Roma lies about three kilometres south-west of Mexico City's historic centre, wedged between Avenida Insurgentes to the west, Avenida Cuauhtémoc to the east, Paseo de la Reforma to the north and Viaducto to the south. Calle Coahuila splits it into Roma Norte, the busier half, and the quieter, more residential Roma Sur. The street grid is unusually generous for the city: wide pavements, deep front gardens, and long files of jacarandas that turn the whole neighbourhood violet for three weeks in late March. Two green squares anchor it — Plaza Río de Janeiro, with a bronze copy of Michelangelo's David and the red-brick, turreted Casa de las Brujas of 1908, and Plaza Luis Cabrera, whose fountain is the neighbourhood's default meeting point.

The story behind it. The colony was laid out from 1902 on the old Hacienda de la Condesa de Miravalle by a development company led by the English circus impresario Edward Walter Orrin and the American businessman Cassius Clay Lamm, and marketed to the Porfirian upper class. What went up between 1903 and 1920 was a catalogue of European ambition: Art Nouveau, neo-Gothic, Beaux-Arts and porfiriano eclectic mansions in quarried stone, many now behind restaurant terraces. Casa Lamm, at Álvaro Obregón 99, is the surviving showpiece and works today as a cultural centre and bookshop. Absorbed inside the grid is Romita, a colonial village older than everything around it, with a small 16th-century chapel and a plaza that Luis Buñuel used as a location for Los Olvidados in 1950.

On screen. Roma's global fame arrived with Alfonso Cuarón's Roma (2018), an autobiographical film set in 1970–71 in the house where he grew up. The family's exterior is a house on Calle Tepeji, a short block in Roma Sur; the interiors were built as a set rather than shot in the real building, and the production stripped modern signage, aerials and parked cars from the surrounding streets to rebuild the period. Crucially, the film is not a documentary tour of the neighbourhood: the Corpus Christi massacre sequence — the Halconazo of 10 June 1971 — was staged in Tlaxpana, several kilometres north-west, and the beach episode was filmed on the Veracruz coast at Tuxpan. Cuarón shot it himself in black and white on a large-format digital camera, which is why the streets read wider and emptier on screen than they feel on foot.

What you actually see today. Roma is now one of the densest concentrations of independent culture in Latin America. Avenida Álvaro Obregón, with its planted central median and neoclassical statuary, is the spine: bookshops, galleries such as OMR and Kurimanzutto's neighbours in adjacent colonias, mezcalerías, and the Mercado Roma food hall. Contemporary Mexican cooking has clustered here — Rosetta in a restored mansion on Colima, Contramar just over the boundary, taquerías like El Califa and Tacos Hola El Güero, and coffee roasters on nearly every corner. Street life is genuine rather than staged: dog walkers with eight leads, the camote seller's steam whistle at dusk, weekend antiques on Plaza Río de Janeiro, and the Sunday tianguis on Calle Tabasco.

The fault line under it. Roma sits on some of the softest lakebed clay in the valley, which amplifies seismic waves, and its history is punctuated by collapse. The earthquake of 19 September 1985 destroyed hundreds of buildings here and in neighbouring Condesa and killed thousands across the city; on exactly the same date in 2017, another quake brought down more structures a few streets away. Empty lots, propped façades and newer infill among the Porfirian houses are the visible record. The reconstruction after 1985 hollowed out the area and left it cheap, which is what drew artists and students in the 1990s — the beginning of the gentrification that has since pushed rents to among the highest in the city and made housing a live political argument.

Getting there and timing. Metrobús Line 1 runs down Insurgentes with stops at Álvaro Obregón and Sonora; Metro Insurgentes and Hospital General sit at either flank, and Ecobici docking stations are everywhere. The neighbourhood is compact and flat, so walking is the natural mode, though broken pavement, tree roots and steep kerbs make wheelchair travel awkward. Late March into April brings the jacaranda bloom; the rainy season from June to September delivers dramatic afternoon downpours that clear by evening. Roma stays lively after dark, and it pairs naturally with a walk west into Condesa around Parque México, ten minutes away on foot. Note that restaurant reservations at the better-known kitchens are now genuinely necessary, often weeks ahead, and that Sunday is the day many of the smaller galleries and bookshops close.