Polanco

Polanco is the wealthy neighbourhood on the north side of Chapultepec Park, in the Miguel Hidalgo borough, bounded by Paseo de la Reforma, the Periférico, Avenida Ejército Nacional and Mariano Escobedo. Its name recalls a stream that ran along today's Campos Elíseos and the Jesuit Juan Alfonso de Polanco, secretary to Ignatius of Loyola. The land belonged to the colonial Hacienda de San Juan de los Morales, named for the mulberry trees once grown there for silkworms, and was subdivided from the late 1920s and through the 1930s. The streets were given the names of writers and thinkers, so you walk along Homero, Horacio, Molière and Julio Verne.

The first houses were large mansions with gardens in the Colonial Californiano style, inspired by the Mission Revival architecture of the US Southwest, and a few of the best survive around Parque Lincoln and on Julio Verne and Campos Elíseos, along with the 1938 Pasaje Polanco, a courtyard of shops in the same style. After the 1985 earthquake, embassies, restaurants, boutiques and company offices moved here from the Zona Rosa, and many houses gave way to apartment and office blocks. Polanco has long been home to Jewish, Spanish, French, German and Lebanese communities, and has several synagogues and kosher bakeries. Today it has about 27,000 residents in five sections and some of the highest land prices in Latin America.

Visitors come to shop, eat and see art. Avenida Presidente Masaryk is lined with international luxury houses, and the Palacio de Hierro on Moliere is the largest department store in Latin America. The restaurants are the city's most celebrated: Pujol and Quintonil, both with two Michelin stars, regularly appear on the World's 50 Best list. Parque Lincoln, with its clock tower and the open-air Teatro Ángela Peralta, is the neighbourhood's living room. The Museo Nacional de Antropología and the Museo Tamayo sit just south in Chapultepec, the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros is in Polanco itself, and Museo Soumaya and Museo Jumex are across Ejército Nacional in Nuevo Polanco.