Mexico City for The Time Travellers: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

Three centuries of building on a drained lake: start at the plumb line under the dome and look for the Aztec stones reused in the base of the walls.

Art nouveau outside, art deco inside, and Rivera's Man at the Crossroads repainted here after Rockefeller destroyed the New York original.

The plotters' bar: carved booths from 1876 and the bullet hole Pancho Villa left in the ceiling, with a cazuela of chamorro and a tequila.

The twin pyramid Cortés buried under his cathedral, found in 1978 when an electrician hit the Coyolxauhqui stone; the museum's tzompantli is the point.

A Jesuit college from 1588 whose stairwells carry Orozco's first murals; the guides know which cloister saw the 1968 army raid.

Ricardo Muñoz Zurita's menu of regional classics in the courtyard of a seventeenth-century palace, under trees hung with lanterns.

O'Gorman's windowless Biblioteca Central wrapped in stone mosaic, Siqueiros's Rectoría relief, and the lava-field campus plan from 1952.

The one guided tour worth the booking: Barragán's own house of 1948, walls of colour, a cross cut into the window, and the roof terrace open only to sky.

A pared-back townhouse dining room with a courtyard, sourdough and a short menu that changes with the Mercado de Jamaica.

The 1956 tower that rode out the 1985 earthquake on its floating foundation; the 44th-floor deck shows the whole lake-bed grid.

Barragán's last house, visited by appointment: a yellow corridor that ends in a blue pool with a single red wall in the water.

Tacos de canasta from a basket under the arcades, eaten standing with a bottle of Boing before the metro to the airport.