Zona Rosa — Calle Amberes Gay District

Mexico City's queer capital has an address: the Zona Rosa, and within it the pedestrianised Calle Amberes — often called the gayest street in Mexico. The district's LGBTQ roots reach to the 1970s, when El Nueve opened in 1974 as the country's first officially licensed gay nightclub, and venues like the writer Luis González de Alba's El Taller made the neighbourhood a refuge in far harder years. Today roughly a hundred LGBTQ venues concentrate in and around the district — bars, clubs, saunas, shops — with rainbow crossings underfoot and the annual Marcha del Orgullo, one of the world's largest Prides, passing along Reforma at its edge. The neighbourhood has layered identities (a Korean commercial quarter shares its blocks), which is very Mexico City. What you see today: Amberes and its cross-streets waking toward evening, busiest from Thursday to Sunday, three minutes from Metro Insurgentes. Start on Amberes and let the district unfold; the plaque commemorating the 1901 'Dance of the 41' — the founding scandal of Mexican queer history — is a short ride away by the Alameda.