Ciudad de México

After spending much of the day in airports and planes, I arrived in Ciudad de Mexico wanting a walk. Luckily I’m staying right in the center of the old town so there’s a lot to see.

I went to the Cathedral first – mostly because it’s right opposite the hotel. It’s the oldest and largest cathedral in Central America. Refreshingly it is free to enter, otherwise I’d have had to consider whether my rule about not paying to enter European cathedrals was trans-continental. Inside it is huge, but unusually plain. The Cathedral was built between 1573 and 1813 on the site of the main Aztec temple and used stones from the temple – which is very colonial ugly. Building on the temple also means building on a lake, and the Cathedral is sinking by about 20cm a year – but then so is the entire surrounding city, so it’s not that noticeable.

Feeling the need to cleanse my brain, I pottered on to the Palacio de Bellas Artes which is a fabulous place. The building combines an Art Nouveau exterior with an Art Deco interior to great effect. But it’s the huge murals that are breathtaking. In the 1930s murals were enormously popular in a wave of post-Revolutionary nationalism and one of the greatest muralists was Diego Rivera, and the Palacio is the place to see his murals.

Rivera is a fascinating person who often gets relegated to ‘husband of Frida Kahlo’ but is much more interesting than that. Rivera was a commited communist and when he was commissioned by Rockefeller to do a mural for the new Rockefeller Centre in New York he came up with a design to illustrate the triumph of socialism over capitalism. Not long after he started it – the Americans realized what he was painting and withdrew the commission. Rivera returned to Mexico where he was asked to paint a mural in the Palacio and went with the same theme with some subtle additions. He added in Rockefeller ignoring the poor in close association with a picture of syphilis (he’s the greenish dude in the bottom middle above).

My final distinct stop was the central post office which is just like a cathedral to times past when post and telegraph were the internet of their time.

Finally I just wandered about for a while, got trapped in an elevator, and watched people from a cool bar. I’m also contemplating whether I’ll have to go clothes shopping. The nights are cool here, 12 degrees forecast, and I packed for heat. But even more unexpected is the fact it’s raining and forecast to keep raining for the next few days.