Things to do

Worth your time

• Just walk the callejones. The single best thing here is free. Climb the alleys, get lost, come out somewhere with a view. The whole layered city reveals itself on foot.

• Funicular to El Pipila. A short ride up to the giant Pipila statue and the classic overlook of the whole ravine of colored houses. Go for sunset, or early to skip crowds. You can walk up instead if your legs are willing.

• A callejoneada. The nighttime alley walks led by estudiantina singers in medieval costume are touristy on paper but genuinely fun, and full of locals and students too, not just visitors. Worth doing once.

• Teatro Juarez. Even if you do not catch a show, the theater’s interior is worth the small entry. It anchors the Jardin de la Union.

• Mercado Hidalgo. A cast-iron market hall for food, snacks and browsing more than serious shopping. Eat here.

Do it if it’s your thing

• Museo de las Momias (the mummy museum). The city’s most famous attraction and the most divisive. It is a room of naturally mummified bodies, morbid and a bit of a tourist machine. Some love the strangeness; plenty leave underwhelmed. Skip it if the concept does not pull you.

• Diego Rivera’s birthplace house and the Alhondiga. Solid, low-key museums for people into art and Mexican history. Fine, not essential.

Oversold

• The tunnels as a “sight.” They are an engineering curiosity you will pass through anyway, not a destination to seek out on foot.

• Callejon del Beso. The “alley of the kiss” is a two-minute photo stop wrapped in a legend and a small crowd. See it in passing, do not plan around it.

How to sequence it

Do the climbing and the funicular in the morning, museums and market in the heat of the day, and save the callejoneada and plaza life for the evening.