Mercado de Xochimilco: the market beside the historic centre

What the Mercado de Xochimilco is

Two market buildings at Av. Nuevo León s/n, Santa Crucita, 16070, with the second of them commonly called the "new" market. The city's venue listing puts roughly 450 vendors inside and outside the pair and gives the same hours seven days a week, 8:00 to 20:00. It also calls the market the regional distribution centre for the borough's farming area, which is the useful part: the vegetables, herbs and flowers moving through the aisles are coming off the chinampas, the hand-built plots the borough dates to roughly the 14th to 16th centuries and still plants today.

No official source maps the interior or names the individual halls, so do not go looking for a published floor plan. Walk both buildings once and you will have the shape of it: produce and flowers in bulk, cooked food where people sit down, and the household and devotional goods any working neighbourhood market carries. Come in the first hour or two if produce is what you are there for, and later if lunch is.

Weekends are busier across the whole borough rather than inside the market specifically. The listing names no market day, but the canals pull the crowds: about 220 boats work from Nuevo Nativitas and about 215 from Caltongo, and a car from the central neighbourhoods takes longer on a Sunday afternoon. A weekday mid-morning is the easy visit.

Xochimilco market food stalls and comida corrida

Lunch is the reason to stay. The city recommends the market for comida corrida, the set-price midday meal, and that is what the cooked-food counters are set up to serve: a sequence of courses put in front of you rather than a menu to study. Arrive around midday and you will be eating while the kitchens are at their busiest, which is when they are at their best.

Practical manners matter more here than in a restaurant. Bring cash in small notes. The aisles are working space for porters and traders, so stand to one side when you stop to look, and keep bags in front of you rather than swinging behind. Ask before you photograph a stall or the person running it, and do not block a counter to set up a shot. If you want a juice or a coffee and sweet bread before anything else, that is the early part of the day; the market keeps going until 20:00, long after the boats have come off the water.

Where it sits, and how to reach it

The market and the parish share the same neighbourhood: the church and former monastery of San Bernardino de Siena stands on Av. Guadalupe I. Ramírez, also in Santa Crucita, 16070, with the Capilla de la Tercera Orden listed 0.05 km away and the Clock Tower 0.16 km off. The Jardín Juárez fills the church's old atrium at the northern edge of the central plaza, 0.07 km from the Plaza Central, and the city describes it as the usual meeting point and the place people set off from for the landings.

On rails you arrive at Terminal Xochimilco, the southern end of the Tren Ligero, which the city places a short distance from the historic centre without giving a figure in kilometres. The published route in is Metro Line 2 to Taxqueña and a transfer to the light rail; buses on Ruta 26 signed Izazaga–Xochimilco stop about two blocks from the historic centre. Service runs Monday to Friday 05:00–00:00, Saturdays 06:00–00:00 and Sundays and holidays 07:00–00:00. The transport page on this site sets out the legs, the card you need for the light rail and the driving route.

Not the same as the plant market at Cuemanco

Three different things get called the Xochimilco flower market, and they are in three different parts of the borough. The Mercado de Plantas y Flores de Cuemanco is the big one: about 600 traders at Canal Nacional 2000, Coapa, Cuemanco, 16036, directly across the road from the Xochimilco Ecological Park, selling cacti, fruit trees, bonsai, tulips, violets and medicinal herbs. It shuts at 16:00, four hours before the covered market in the centre, so put it in the morning.

Madreselva is the one you can walk to from a boarding point: it lies inside the Bosque de Nativitas, 0.28 km from Embarcadero Nuevo Nativitas and 0.18 km from Embarcadero Las Flores Nativitas. The craft markets people remember from the canals sit at the landings themselves. On the traditional side of the canals that means Nativitas, Zacapa and Las Flores Nativitas, all three with large facilities, parking, restaurants and craft stalls; the biggest craft market of the group is the one at Nuevo Nativitas, which also has small restaurants on land and a listed timetable of 6:00 to 22:00 every day.

Pick by what you want to carry home and where your boat leaves from. Hours are from the city's own listings; check on the day.

Adding the market to a canal day

The hours decide the order. Trajineras tend to finish by about 17:00 because the canals carry no lighting, even at a landing that stays open later, while the market is still serving after that and does not shut its doors until 20:00. Board early, take your two to three hours on the water, then eat in the market in the afternoon. The reverse also works and is how the guided version runs: start among the stalls, then move to the pier.

Cuemanco only fits the first half of a day, and only if you are already heading to the protected-zone side of the canals. If you want a plant market after a late lunch in the centre, you have missed it by hours.

For a guided day that actually includes the stalls, the 3.5-hour markets and canals tour on this site is the one: it begins in the Xochimilco markets, takes a bicitaxi from there to the pier, and adds a traditional chinampa and an axolotl sanctuary on the water. The 4–6 hour private Frida Kahlo, Coyoacán and Xochimilco day is built around the museum and the boat ride instead, with no market stop listed, so if the market matters, either choose the market tour or set aside your own hour in the aisles before or after.

• Produce and flowers at their best: first hours after 8:00, weekday
• Comida corrida: around midday, in the covered market
• Plants to take away: Cuemanco, before 16:00
• Crafts beside the boats: the Nativitas and Las Flores Nativitas landings
• Cash in small notes, bags in front of you, ask before photographing

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