Anyway, on the morning of my first day in Mexico City, a friend and I were taking an Uber across the city to get to the bus station, when I started to see bits and pieces of murals tucked away down alleyways, behind cars, over fences, etc. We were clearly passing through some sort of cluster, so I quickly grabbed my phone and dropped a pin on the map. Come hell or high water, I was going to come back to this spot with my camera.
The gallery that follows contains murals from all over Mexico City that we walked past as some point the week we spent there, but probably 50% of them come from that dropped pin on the map. And probably 75% of what are my favorites in this lot come from that dropped pin on the map.
Just 2-ish hours southeast of the Mexican capital, Puebla is dwarfed by Mexico City. But don’t let that fool you! It’s actually got a population of about 3.25 million people (metro), so it’s no small place. It’s actually the 4th largest city in Mexico. And remember how I said that Mexico City sits at a higher elevation than Denver? Puebla is up here as well! It sits at an elevation of 7,217.85 ft (1.37 miles) above sea level. In fact, this area is so mountainous that you actually have to drive past snow-capped volcanoes to get here from Mexico City.
Let’s start with size. Mexico City is really, really big. In fact, Mexico City proper has almost 9 million people and Mexico City metro is home to a whopping 21 million people, which just a few million less than Beijing. This makes it the largest population center on the entire continent of North America—bigger even than New York, LA, Chicago, Toronto, etc. It also puts Mexico City comfortably in the top 10 largest cities in the world.