Pabellón Altavista

The Pabellón Altavista is a smaller shopping center at the corner of the Avenida Revolución and Desierto de los leones. In the very north of San Ángel, the complex offers a few chain restaurants, and some shops and boutiques. Directly across the street from the Carrillo Gil Art Museum, the plaza has benefited from the area’s strong growth, especially with office workers from the area’s service industries centered around the adjacent stretch of Insurgentes Sur.

This pavilion opened in the late 1990s when the area was just getting going. It was one of the first shopping centers to offer an indoor movie multi-screen cinema as part of the shopping center. Today, a shopping center without a multiplex is almost unheard of.

For visitors from the art museum, or from further south in the San Ángel area, the Pabellón Altavista can offer a clean place to rest and recoup, as well as the familiar laminated lunch menus with photos. The Museo de el Carmen is about a six-minute walk to the south along the Avenida Revolución. And with the flower market in between, it can even be a paradoxically pleasant walk.

The plaza’s name comes from the cross-street on the other side of Revolución. The Avenida Altavista is one of the area’s most concentrated stretches of design and furniture dealers. It’s among the iconic streets of this part of Mexico City and a good introduction to the interior of the more mountainous neighborhoods of Álvaro Obregón to the west.