1. A ranch, a British sanatorium, and a neighborhood that wanted to be Polanco
For most of Mexico City's colonial period, the land that would become Colonia Anzures was part of the Anzures Ranch — a working estate that bordered the Chapultepec Forest. It stayed agricultural while the rest of the city expanded around it. When the Mexican Revolution disrupted property records across the Federal District, the Central Mining and Investment Company of London acquired the land in 1912 and waited out the years of fighting. Their first act once the conflict quieted was not to build homes but a hospital. In 1923, they opened the Sanatorio Cowdray, named for Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount of Cowdray — a British industrialist whose construction portfolio in Mexico included the Port of Veracruz and the drainage system that prevents Mexico City from flooding. The sanatorium served the capital's professional class at a time when the surrounding land had almost no residents. Residential development came in the 1950s when lots were released around the sanatorium site. The anthropologist Luis Barjau later characterized the incoming population as 'middle-class pretentious residents who wanted to emulate the then sumptuous Polanco, but smaller.' The description is pointed but accurate: Anzures was built on the logic of Polanco at a reduced scale, and the neighborhood that resulted is quieter and more livable for exactly that reason.
2. The Hotel Camino Real: Ricardo Legorreta's Olympic commission
The Sanatorio Cowdray eventually gave way to the building that defines Anzures today. In 1968, the Hotel Camino Real opened at Mariano Escobedo 700 — on the same site the sanatorium had occupied — and it was immediately recognized as one of the most significant pieces of architecture Mexico City had produced in a generation. Ricardo Legorreta received the commission in his late thirties, his first major hotel project. He had trained at UNAM under the direct influence of Luis Barragán, and the hotel reflects Barragán's fundamental conviction: color, mass, and light should do the emotional work that ornamentation typically does. Legorreta designed against Mexico City's vertical construction trend, choosing a low building spread across a large footprint and organized around a sequence of intimate courtyards. The entrance gate is a monumental pink lattice screen set against a saturated yellow wall — the exact color palette from Barragán's own house in Tacubaya. In the access courtyard, Isamu Noguchi designed the hotel's defining water element: a circular pool in which blue-dyed water rotates in a slow, constant whirlpool, with different intensity during the day versus the evening. Inside the lobby, Rufino Tamayo painted 'El Hombre Frente al Infinito' (1971). Mathias Goeritz's Golden Mural fills the wall after the first staircase flight. The hotel currently operates as Camino Real Polanco Mexico. The courtyard, fountain, and lobby are accessible to anyone who walks through the Mariano Escobedo entrance — no room booking required.
3. Calle Leibnitz: where the neighborhood's eating scene actually happens
Most of Anzures' restaurant and café life runs along Calle Leibnitz, a one-way street of low buildings and shaded sidewalks that functions as the neighborhood's commercial main street. The density is significantly lower than Roma Norte or Condesa — there is no queue outside any of these places on a Tuesday morning — which is exactly the point. El Fogoncito at Leibnitz 54 is the neighborhood's taquería reference: a long-running spot with al pastor on the vertical spit, costilla tacos from slow-cooked rib, and gringas — the flour tortilla folded over al pastor and melted cheese that is a specific Mexico City invention somewhere between a taco and a quesadilla. Pan Comido at Leibnitz 117 handles mornings: eggs in multiple preparations, house-baked bread, and good espresso in a narrow dining room that fills from 9 am on weekends. Otro Café is a single-origin coffee shop in a converted ground-floor apartment with an indoor bar and a small shaded terrace — used as an unofficial work space by the neighborhood's resident population of professionals during the week. For the evening, Frutos Prohibidos on Leibnitz runs a compact seasonal menu with natural wine by the glass and a back room that becomes the best place in Anzures to spend a Thursday night.
4. Walking Anzures: Californian colonial streets and afternoon quiet
Away from Mariano Escobedo and Calle Leibnitz, Anzures is a neighborhood of two-story homes under a near-continuous tree canopy. The dominant architectural style is Californian colonial — the hybrid that arrived in Mexico City's middle-class neighborhoods during the mid-20th century: red clay tile roofs, whitewashed stucco walls, arched doorways, ornate iron gates opening onto interior courtyards. The style had originally traveled from Mexico to Alta California, evolved into Spanish Colonial Revival architecture in the American Southwest, and returned to Mexico City as a marker of aspiration during the postwar decades. Some earlier buildings from the 1930s show Art Deco detailing — geometric stucco reliefs, horizontal banding — that echo the heavier concentration found a few colonias east in Hipodromo. The streets in Anzures are narrow enough that the trees close overhead, and in June during the rainy season when everything is actively green, the afternoon light through the canopy is one of those Mexico City textures that requires no agenda to appreciate. Walking from Mariano Escobedo west toward Leibnitz and then south toward Ejercito Nacional takes about twenty-five minutes and covers most of what the neighborhood offers on foot.
5. Anzures today: expats, professionals, and a genuinely local ratio
Anzures is occupied primarily by long-term residents — established families who have been in the colonia for decades alongside a growing layer of young professionals and expats who find that Polanco's spatial logic does not require Polanco's price per square meter. The neighborhood has no hostel scene and limited short-term rental concentration compared to Roma Norte or Condesa, which means the restaurants and cafes on Calle Leibnitz are used primarily by people who live within a ten-minute walk. That ratio — locals to tourists — is increasingly rare in the parts of Mexico City that appear most often in travel media. The closest character comparison is Escandon to the south: a residential neighborhood with good food, strong walkability, and the specific reward of feeling like you are in the actual city rather than the version of it that has been prepared for visitors. For someone staying in or spending the day in Polanco, Anzures is a ten-minute walk that shows the same urban grid without the luxury retail.
6. Is Anzures safe? Getting there and practical tips
Is Anzures safe? Yes — it is a residential neighborhood with consistent foot traffic during daylight hours and no significant security concerns beyond standard Mexico City awareness. Use Uber or DiDi rather than hailing street taxis at night, keep your phone in a bag rather than a back pocket on busier corners, and apply the same judgment you would in any dense urban neighborhood. The area around Mariano Escobedo and the Hotel Camino Real stays active until midnight. When is the best time to go? Weekday mornings from 8 to 11 am are the neighborhood at its most functional: Calle Leibnitz is occupied by residents heading to work, bakeries are freshly stocked, and the Camino Real courtyard is quiet enough to move through with real attention. Weekend afternoons bring more activity at restaurants from noon onward but the streets never feel crowded. Getting there by metro: Metro Polanco (Line 7, orange) at the Arquimedes and Masaryk exit puts you at the neighborhood's northeast corner — walk three blocks south on Arquimedes. Metro Chapultepec (Line 1, pink) puts you at the southern edge near Mariano Escobedo. Ecobici docking stations run along Ejercito Nacional, and the terrain is entirely flat.
Keep exploring
Want to explore the neighborhood built around Mexico City's most architectural hotel?
TourMe turns the story of Ricardo Legorreta's 1968 commission, the Sanatorio Cowdray it replaced, and the mid-century ambitions that built Anzures into short interactive stories and collectible cards. Explore the colonia with the context most visitors never get.
