Where to stay in Mexico City

Roma and Condesa are two adjoining colonias laid out either side of Avenida Insurgentes in the early twentieth century, and they are the reason this city's reputation changed: jacaranda-lined streets, art-deco and Porfirian houses, two large parks, and one of the densest runs of good restaurants and coffee anywhere in the Americas. It is flat, walkable and green in a city that is mostly none of those. What it is not is where the monuments are — the Zócalo and the Anthropology Museum are each a ride away — and the rates have followed the reputation.

The old city, laid out on the Aztec one: the Zócalo with the cathedral on its north side and the Templo Mayor dug out beside it, the Palacio Nacional and its murals, Bellas Artes, and a grid of streets each still given over to one trade. Almost everything a first-time visitor came to see is inside it or within a short walk, and the rooms cost less than anywhere else in this guide. It also empties: the shops close, the day's commuters leave, and several streets that are crowded at noon are deserted by nine. That is how the district is used rather than a warning about the people in it — the blocks around the Zócalo and along Madero stay busy and lit, and which street the hotel is on matters more here than in any other area on this list.

The strip between the other two, laid along Paseo de la Reforma: the Ángel de la Independencia, the tall hotels, the Zona Rosa behind them, and the streets around Havre and Versalles that have quietly become one of the better places to eat in the city. It is the compromise choice in the good sense — Centro is a walk east and Roma a walk south, and you are on the avenue the whole city orients itself by.

The expensive quarter, west of Chapultepec: embassies, the fine-dining list, Masaryk with its flagship stores, and the museums on the park's edge — the Anthropology Museum, the castle, the Soumaya and Jumex a little north. The streets are wide, clean, quiet and patrolled, and very little happens on them. Anzures, next door across the Circuito, is a cheaper and quieter neighbourhood and is not part of this area.

North of Reforma and immediately west of Centro: two Porfirian colonias of tall shuttered houses, the Kiosco Morisco standing in the middle of Santa María's alameda, and the Chopo museum. Long overlooked, currently changing, and by some distance the best value in this guide — a room here costs a fraction of the same room in Roma, twenty minutes away.