Bar La Ópera

Empires have fallen, revolutions have passed through the streets outside and Mexico City itself has been transformed beyond recognition in the century and a half since Bar La Ópera opened on Avenida 5 de Mayo in 1876. Inside, almost nothing has changed. The same carved mahogany bar. The same gilded mirrors. The same painted ceiling that curves overhead in shades of tobacco and gold, a holdover from the Porfiriato when French aesthetics set the standard for elegance in the capital.

The bar's most famous feature — a bullet hole in the ceiling, said to have been made by Pancho Villa himself during the Revolution — remains visible to this day. Staff will point it out if you ask. Whether the attribution is historically precise or pleasingly mythologised is somewhat beside the point. La Ópera is that kind of place: one where history and legend are allowed to coexist, and where the act of sitting at the bar puts you in a conversation with everyone who sat here before you.

The drinks are classically cantina: brandy, tequila, imported spirits, house cocktails built on European templates absorbed into Mexican culture over 150 years. Order a brandy old fashioned or a tequila Manhattan, take a stool at the bar and look up. This is not the most innovative bar in Mexico City — Licorería Limantour and others have that territory covered — but it may be the most important. A city without a place like Bar La Ópera is a city without a memory.