Avenida Altavista, Álvaro Obregón

The Avenida Altavista runs in essence from the Carillo Gil Art Museum to the Diego Rivera – Frida Kahlo House & Studio. Both are important points in Mexico City’s cultural map. But the street between them is one of the most beautiful and interesting in the north of San Ángel. The street is also one of the important centers for design, furniture, and interiors with multiple unique, high-end retailers operating salesrooms on both sides of the street.

The Avenida Altavista can be said to begin at Insurgentes Sur where signs begin directing traffic westward to Altavista. Insurgentes is here crossed by another iconic Mexico City street, Vito Alessio Robles. As that street ends, the name is briefly changed to Desierto de los Leones, and Altavista begins on the other side of the Avenida Revolución. It continues some two kilometers to the San Ángel Inn and the House & Studio museum. Here the name changes again to the Calzada Santa Catarina. Almost immediately upon crossing Revolución, the street serves as an introduction to the mountainous and ravine-crossed landscape of Álvaro Obregón. 

Above the Av. Revolucion to the west, Altavista branches off into dozens of narrow cobblestoned side streets. These residential neighborhoods are replete with homes in styles ranging from Baroque to Neoclassical and Neocolonial and, of course, most famously in the functionalist style of artist and architect, Juan O’Gorman. He designed the House-Studio museum and the first functionalist house, for his father on the same site.

The entire area bears the name of the San Ángel Inn, for the old hacienda today converted into a restaurant and events venue. It’s at the Inn that the Avenida Altavista ends at the intersection with the Calzada Santa Catarina. The street is among the most important stretches of  concentrated design, furniture, and decorating firms in Mexico City. There’s also a coterie dedicated to printing and stationery here, too. For that, it’s one of the Iconic Streets, too.