Roma and Condesa: Mexico City's Art Deco Comeback

On September 19, 1985, an earthquake partly or fully collapsed 472 buildings in Colonia Roma, most of them in the north of the neighborhood, and left about 15,000 people without homes. Roma had been sliding for decades already. Rent freezes imposed in the 1940s were not lifted until the 1990s, landlords stopped maintaining their buildings, and the population fell from about 95,000 in 1970 to about 35,000 by 1995. The quake turned a slow decline into an exodus, and Condesa, next door, emptied with it.

Both came back. Walk them now and the hard part is remembering that.

A suburb planned by a circus owner

Roma was approved as a residential development in 1902. Its backers were an odd crew, including the British circus owner Edward Walter Orrin, the clown Ricardo Bell, the American engineer Cassius Clay Lamm and his sons, and Pedro Lascuráin. With help from Porfirio Díaz's government it became the first colonia in Mexico City with proper roads, running water and sewers.

The planners modeled the wide, tree-lined boulevards on Paris and named the streets after the Mexican states and cities where the Orrin Circus had performed, which is why the street signs read like an old touring schedule, Durango, Colima, Tabasco, Zacatecas. Avenida Álvaro Obregón, the main spine, started life as Avenida Jalisco. The grand houses went up between 1906 and 1939, first in French-influenced styles and then, through the 1920s and 1930s, in Art Deco. By 1996 about 1,100 of those early-twentieth-century mansions were still standing. The history of Colonia Roma is worth reading before you go, if only for the detail.

The ground has not stopped moving. On September 19, 2017, exactly 32 years after the first disaster, another earthquake collapsed an office building on Álvaro Obregón and killed 49 people.

A racetrack you can still lap

Condesa takes its name from the Countess of Miravalle, whose hacienda once covered the land, and it was formally established in 1902. In 1910 Díaz opened a racetrack there run by the Jockey Club, used for horses and for early auto racing. It closed during the Revolution, but you can still follow it. Avenida Amsterdam traces the curve of the old track in a long loop, with a shaded pedestrian median down the middle and roundabouts named for volcanoes, Popocatépetl and Citlaltépetl among them. Look at the benches. Even those are Art Deco.

Parque México was laid out on the former track site in the 1920s as the center of the new neighborhood. Parque España, a few blocks away, dates from 1921 and marked a century since the end of the War of Independence. Through the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s Art Deco was the house style.

The building to see is the Edificio Basurto on Avenida México, designed by Francisco J. Serrano and finished in the mid-1940s. It is a tall Art Deco apartment block built around a famous spiral staircase, which you can only really see from inside. It is a residential building, so admire it from the street unless a resident waves you in. Serrano also designed a building on Amsterdam, and once you know his streamlined corners you will start spotting them.

After 1985 the rents fell, younger residents moved in, and by the late 1980s the area had a bohemian reputation. Sidewalk dining, now the whole point of the place, was still a rarity in the 1990s.

Roma's galleries

Galería OMR is the anchor. Patricia Ortiz Monasterio and Jaime Riestra founded it in 1983, and for about 30 years it occupied a turn-of-the-century villa on Plaza Río de Janeiro. In 2015 it moved to a remodeled 1970s brutalist building on Calle Córdoba that once housed the record and book shop Sala Margolín. The building is half the reason to go. OMR's own history page has the details.

Galería Mascota, in Roma Norte, is a project space focused on emerging artists from outside Mexico, and it took part in the 2025 GAMA gallery week alongside OMR. MODO, the Museo del Objeto del Objeto on Colima, runs rotating shows built from everyday objects, and it is the closest thing the neighborhood has to a design museum. Casa Guillermo Tovar de Teresa, a Porfirian mansion that became part of the Slim Foundation in 2019, holds the late historian's collection of colonial-era art, a library and a sculpture garden. Over in Condesa, House of Gaga shows more experimental, avant-garde work.

Roma's independent design and vintage shops turn over faster than its galleries, so we have left them off this list rather than send you to an empty storefront. Walk Colima and Córdoba and you will find this season's crop.

Where to eat

Contramar has served seafood in Roma Norte since 1998 under the chef Gabriela Cámara, and the order is the pescado a la talla, a whole grilled fish painted with a red rub on one side and a green one on the other, plus the tuna tostadas. Go at lunch, the way Mexico City does.

Panadería Rosetta, the bakery from the chef Elena Reygadas on Colima, is our pick for breakfast pastry in the area. Maíz de Cacao builds its breakfast around corn and the cooking of the Huasteca region. For a serious dinner, EM, from the chef Lucho Martínez, holds a Michelin star and serves a tasting menu, and you need to book well in advance. In Condesa, Chiquitito Café is the long-running local coffee stop.

Check before you go. All of these appear at these locations in 2025 coverage, but menus, reservation rules and even addresses can change.

How to spend the day

Start with coffee at Chiquitito, then walk the Amsterdam loop clockwise and cut through Parque México to the Basurto. Cross Avenida Insurgentes into Roma, get a pastry at Rosetta, then do OMR, Mascota and MODO before a long lunch at Contramar. Spend the late afternoon in Plaza Río de Janeiro and along Álvaro Obregón, and finish with dinner at EM if you managed the booking.

If the Parisian bones of Roma appeal, our Le Marais style guide covers the original. For another city where the street does the shopping for you, see our Fairfax Avenue guide, and for the European modernism that ran parallel to Serrano's work, our history of the Bauhaus. More in our architecture and art archives, our city guides and the full Travel section.

Before you leave Roma, find the house on Calle Tepeji where Alfonso Cuarón shot his 2018 film about the neighborhood. A small plaque on the facade reads Aquí se filmó Roma.