National Museum of Anthropology

The one ticket you don’t have to book ahead

After the panic of booking Casa Azul weeks out, this is a relief: the Museo Nacional de Antropología takes a flat 100 pesos (about £4.30) on the door, there’s no timed entry and it almost never sells out, so you just walk up. The thing to manage is time, not tickets. The museum is vast — twelve ground-floor archaeology halls wrapped around a courtyard, with ethnography above — and trying to read every label will defeat you. Come at 09:00 on a weekday with three to four hours in hand, head straight for the Mexica (Aztec) hall with the Sun Stone while it’s still quiet, then loop back through Teotihuacan, Oaxaca and the Maya. Book a guide only if you want the symbolism unpicked; the labelling is solid but Spanish-first, and a good guide earns their fee in those three rooms.

Do this before Teotihuacan

Avoid Sundays, when admission is free for residents and the Mexica hall is shoulder-to-shoulder, and avoid late starts — the ticket desk shuts around 17:00 and you want the morning quiet for the headline halls. It sits in Chapultepec Park on Paseo de la Reforma, a short Uber from Roma or Condesa, so pair it with a walk in the park or the castle rather than stacking it against another big indoor sight the same day.

This is the best thing to do in the city, and the order matters — do it before Teotihuacan, not after. The reconstructed temple offerings and the scale models turn what would otherwise be a pile of impressive stones into a story you can follow when you climb the Pyramid of the Sun a day or two later. For under a fiver, nothing else in Mexico City comes close.