Current Time in Colonia del Valle, Mexico

Colonia del Valle is one of the best known neighbourhoods of Mexico City, occupying a large area of the Benito Juárez borough in the central south of the capital. It lies on the floor of the Valley of Mexico at around two thousand two hundred and forty metres above sea level, between the great avenues of Insurgentes and Universidad, a short distance south of the historic core. The altitude gives the area a mild climate throughout the year, with warm dry springs, a rainy season of afternoon storms from June to September, and cool clear winter mornings.

Something in the region of a hundred thousand people live in the neighbourhood and its immediate subdivisions, within a borough of around four hundred and thirty thousand. Benito Juárez consistently records the highest levels of income, education and life expectancy of any part of Mexico, and Del Valle is at its heart: a settled, prosperous, largely middle-class district of apartment buildings, older houses, offices, hospitals and schools.

The colonia was laid out from 1907 on farmland belonging to former haciendas on the southern edge of what was then a much smaller city. It was planned as a garden suburb for professional families, with generous plots, tree-lined streets and small parks, and its architecture records the changing tastes of the twentieth century, from porfirian villas and art deco apartment blocks to the confident modernism of the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the older houses have given way to taller buildings, but the leafy character of the streets survives.

Its parks are among the most loved in the city. Parque Hundido, the sunken park, occupies a former quarry and clay pit, its paths lined with reproductions of pre-Hispanic sculpture from across Mexico. Parque de los Venados, properly the Francisco Villa park, has a bandstand, fountains and a monumental equestrian statue, and hosts open-air concerts and dance classes for older residents. The smaller Tlacoquemécatl park with its colonial chapel preserves the memory of the indigenous village that stood here long before the colonia was drawn.

Del Valle is known for its restaurants, cafés, bookshops and markets, and for a strong neighbourhood identity in a city of enormous scale. Nearby stand the Polyforum with its Siqueiros murals, the World Trade Centre tower, several major hospitals and medical institutes, and a dense concentration of schools and private universities that fills the streets with students on weekday mornings.

Transport is excellent. Lines 3 and 12 of the metro serve the district with stations including Zapata, División del Norte, Eugenia and Parque de los Venados, the Metrobús runs along Insurgentes, one of the busiest bus corridors in Latin America, and cycle lanes and shared bicycles have become part of daily life.

Colonia del Valle is important as an example of how Mexico City grew southwards in the twentieth century, and it remains one of the most comfortable, walkable and well-served neighbourhoods in the capital.