The Zocalo — one of the largest public squares in the world — anchors a colonial grid that was laid directly over the ruins of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, and the layers are visible everywhere: Templo Mayor's pyramids excavated beside the cathedral, colonial facades sinking into the soft clay of the drained lakebed, the Metropolitan Cathedral itself tilting perceptibly off-vertical under its own weight. The streets between the Zocalo and the Alameda hold the city's deepest concentration of cantinas, colonial architecture, and institutional history — Palacio de Bellas Artes, the National Palace with its Rivera murals, the Correo Central with its palatial post-office interior. The cantinas — La Mascota, Salon Corona, the bars around Garibaldi — are working institutions, not tourist attractions, and the botanas tradition they maintain is the Centro's most democratic culinary offering.
By day the streets are dense with vendors, organ grinders, office workers, and tourists; by night the population shifts and the Centro reveals its rawer, more complex character. The ongoing renovation — converting colonial buildings into hotels and restaurants, pedestrianizing streets, restoring facades — is transforming the Centro from a neighborhood that tourists visited into one where they stay.