Introduction

Once exclusively residential, the fashionable Polanco neighborhood just north of Chapultepec Park is today a major commercial district with many of the city’s most upscale boutiques, shopping centers and restaurants lining its main thoroughfare, Avenida Presidente Masaryk. Another prominent street, Avenida Campos Eliseos, is replete with luxury hotels.

Construction of the neighborhood began in the 1920s on land once belonging to the old Hacienda de los Morales; the original hacienda still stands, housing a famed restaurant. In the 1950s Polanco gained popularity among the Jewish, Spanish and Lebanese communities, large portions of which still live here.

Farther west, Lomas de Chapultepec, or Chapultepec Heights, is the Mexican counterpart of Beverly Hills, with rambling mansions, many of which house embassies or corporate offices.