Having said all I’ve said about the sorry state of the barrancas in Cuernavaca, it was a pleasant surprise to discover one shining light in urban conservation and ecological protection. The Barranca de Chapultepec is a beautiful park – a real oasis in the middle of the city. It’s a 3 kilometre walk out of…

Across Avenida Morelos from the Cathedral, el Templo de la Asuncíon de María, lies the Jardín Borda, a sizeable walled garden of terraces, shaded paths, fountains, large ponds and even a lake for pleasure boats. It’s a beautifully quiet and tranquil place, away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Cuernavaca where local traffic roars up…

The ancient, elevated city of Xochicalco is around a 35k drive out of Cuernavaca into the dry mountainous Morelos countryside. The name Xochicalco is Aztec Nahuatl (actually bestowed centuries after the citadel was abandoned) meaning ‘In The House of Flowers’, but the site was first occupied by the Olmec-Xicalanca, a Mayan group of traders from…

Directly opposite our hotel on the rather unpronounceable Calle Netzahualcóyotl is the stunning Museo Robert Brady, though more of a supremely stylish and very liveable (we wish) home than a museum, yet one of the most iconic cultural spaces in Cuernavaca.  The house began its life as La Casa de la Torre in the 16th Century,…

Cuernavaca is a hilly city, with its deep dark barrancas (ravines) seemingly everywhere – not that you really get to see them as houses (some, more shacks) are precariously packed along winding ravine edges, dense with vegetation, with the distant sound of running water far below in the Dante‐esque abyss. Some of these houses look extremely grand, some…

Cuernavaca, known as the ‘City of Eternal Spring’, nicknamed by Alexander von Humboldt in the 19th Century, certainly lives up to its name, with a gorgeous year-round warm climate, despite its 1,550m altitude.  We’re here principally for research purposes, following in the footsteps of Malcolm Lowry, author of arguably one of the great novels of the…

San Ángel is one of those places in a city that perhaps you’d read about but just never got around to visiting. Once a rural hamlet far outside the boundaries of Mexico City, San Ángel is in-fact, one of the most beautiful, clearly one of the wealthiest, and certainly one of the most security-conscious barrios…

Frida Kahlo looms large when thinking of Mexican artists, especially when in Mexico City, where a visit to Casa Azul in Coyoacan is almost a rite of passage. We’ve attempted to visit Casa Azul a number of times, casually I admit, without booking a ticket, and every time we’ve rocked up, the queues have been…

The Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City is a wonderous grand pile of early 20th Century design, with an elaborate exterior of Neo Classical and Art Nouveau architecture, topped with an iron and Marotti crystal dome, creating gallery spaces below naturally illuminated by skylights, a first for its time.  The Palacio de Bellas Artes was…

Meanwhile, over at the magnificent Museo Nacional de Antropología, truly one of the world’s great museums, is the most comprehensive collection of ‘Pre-Cortesian’ (Hernán Cortés) history, dating back to 1790 when the great 24 tonne Aztec Sun Stone was uncovered at the base of the Metropolitan Cathedral.  The Museum is packed with the most important archaeological…