La Ópera Bar, since 1876
La Ópera is the oldest continuously operating bar in Mexico City - or close enough that the distinction is not worth arguing about. It sits on Avenida 5 de Mayo, two blocks from the Palacio de Bellas Artes, with a wooden façade and a swing door that has not been substantially altered in 150 years. The room behind the door is one of the few in the city where the entire span of modern Mexican history feels present at the bar. A timeline.
The bar opens, with French refinements imported by Porfirio Díaz-era developers - mahogany panelling, painted ceiling, brass rails - that the room still wears largely intact. The original target clientele are the opera audiences from the nearby theatre, which is how the bar gets its name.
The Mexican Revolution. La Ópera becomes one of the centro's de-facto headquarters for the revolutionary intellectual class. The famous story - Pancho Villa rides his horse into the bar and shoots a hole in the ceiling - belongs to this period. The bullet hole is real; it has been preserved and labelled, in the painted ceiling above the third booth on the left side of the room.
The bar settles into its second long century. Octavio Paz writes here. Carlos Fuentes is a regular. The bar becomes the working office of the city's literary class - the wooden booths along the left wall, with their high partitions, are still locally referred to by the writers who used them.
The bar is busy with a more mixed crowd - office lunch-hours, evening drinkers, occasional tourists who walked in for the bullet hole and stayed for the wine. The food (pozole, carnitas, sopa de tortilla) is acceptable rather than spectacular; the drinks list is conventional but well-priced. The right move is to order a tequila highball or a glass of Mexican red, sit in a booth on the left wall, and let the room do the work.