The city center is built on the ruins of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan , and later came to be the capital of New Spain, which included much of North America.
The city has grown fast in the 20th century, and is today North America 's largest city and the world's largest Spanish -speaking city with 9. It has 51 locations registered as cultural heritage sites, of which 12 are natural goods, 37 are cultural, and 2 are mixed.
You can visit some of them during your stay. The greater Mexico City metropolitan area is one of the world's largest and the largest city in North America, with 22 million people living in the metropolitan area in It sits in the Valley of Mexico.
It is shaped roughly like an oval of about 60 km by 40 km with large parts of it built on the dry bed of Lake Texcoco, and surrounded on three sides by tall mountains and volcanoes such as the Ajusco, the Popocatepetl and the Iztaccihuatl. Mexico City proper with an estimated population of 9. Confusingly, the rest of the metropolitan area extends beyond Mexico City into the State of Mexico, which surrounds Mexico City on the west, north and east, and Hidalgo further north.
Practically speaking, Mexico City refers to the city proper and is the area where tourists will spend all or most of their time. Mexico City is divided up into 16 boroughs similar to those in New York , which in turn are divided into colonias neighborhoods , of which there are about Knowing what colonia you're going to is essential to getting around, and almost all locals will know where the main colonias are there are some colonias with duplicate or very similar names.
