“Modern architecture is like a black dress or a trench coat: it’s classic, and you can’t get tired of it,” declares Los Angeles fashion designer Trina Turk. We’re sitting in the living room of her 1936 weekend house in Palm Springs, California, known as the Ship of the Desert for its yachtlike appearance. The structure’s “prow” juts out from the mountainside, granting panoramic views of the surrounding desert: lunar hills dotted with cacti and palm trees, labyrinthine housing developments built around lush lagoons and golf courses. Turk motions toward the clean lines, bare walls and expansive windows of her home. “I’m visually bombarded by so many prints and colors in my workday, so being here is a relief,” she says.

Turk and her husband, photographer Jonathan Skow, give me the grand tour, pointing out the kidney-shaped pool, the curvy dining room, the porthole window in the kitchen, and the master bedroom, with its thirties lighting salvaged from a Belgian school. (Skow is an obsessive collector of period fixtures.) Amazingly, though the residence looks almost exactly as it did when it first went up, it’s essentially a new building: six months into its renovation, in 1998, the house burned in a fire (it was arson), and the couple had to begin all over again. “The fire was incredibly devastating at the time,” Turk tells me, “but in the end, it allowed us to bring the house even closer to its original design.”

We step onto a redwood deck that abuts the San Jacinto Mountains. I have been to Palm Springs before, but until this trip, I never truly engaged with the city’s renowned midcentury modern architecture. So when I ask the well-connected designer about the social scene, I’m pleased to hear that my plan for the next four days — gaping at people’s houses in the name of architectural edification — is a very Palm Springs thing to do, at least among the new guard. “Life here is driven by everyone’s desire to see everyone else’s homes,” Turk says, laughing. “We meet people through architecture. We all do the tours” — offered annually by the Palm Springs Modern Committee and the Palm Springs Art Museum — “and most weekends we’ll have dinner at a friend’s house, then head over to someone else’s place for cocktails. There’s a wealth of amazing houses. I’ve stumbled on martini-shaped pools with fountains in the middle, lots of round fireplaces, plenty of sunken conversation pits.” It helps that Turk and Skow possess Palm Springs’ ultimate social capital: a home people are dying to see.

This town has a right to be house-proud. from the twenties through the sixties, Palm Springs evolved from a Wild West outpost to a glamorous getaway for social swells, like Walter and Lenore Annenberg and Jack and Ann Warner, and celebrities, like Clark Gable, Bob Hope and Marilyn Monroe. Back then, studio contracts kept actors on a short leash, requiring that they stay within a two-hour drive of the set. Palm Springs, just 108 miles east of Los Angeles, fit the bill. In the fifties the Rat Pack colonized the town; picture Frank Sinatra hoisting a flag at his Twin Palms estate, an invitation to his movie star neighbors to join him for drinks.

Another breed of star discovered the desert in the thirties and forties. Drawn here by Palm Springs’ agreeable climate and plentiful land, such celebrated architects as Richard Neutra, William Cody and Donald Wexler transformed the city into an architectural laboratory, designing avant-garde vacation homes and commercial buildings for affluent, adventurous clients. Today Palm Springs has the highest concentration of midcentury modern buildings among cities of its size; it is, according to local architecture expert Robert Imber, “the mecca of modernism.” Architecture pilgrims come from as far away as Germany and Japan to ogle the stylish white boxes, which still look design-forward, with their floor-to-ceiling windows, brave angles and innovative use of industrial materials, like corrugated metal and concrete.

After decades of neglect (beginning in the seventies, with the oil crisis), Palm Springs roared back to life a few years ago, revived by a fleet of stylish new hotels and restaurants and, once again, a sprinkling of Hollywood stars and industry insiders. They come for many of the reasons the last generation did — the proximity to Los Angeles, the social acceptability of downing cocktails at midday, preferably poolside — and for new reasons as well: the gay-friendly atmosphere (the gay population is seven times the national average); surprisingly sophisticated restaurants (Copley’s, at Cary Grant’s old estate, and the Austrian-inspired Johannes are two personal favorites); and the dozen or so midcentury modern furniture shops, where visitors can still find great deals on pristine pieces salvaged from local estates.

Shortly after arriving, I dropped my bags at the Parker Palm Springs, a hotel that embodies the city’s singular style. Designer Jonathan Adler renovated the thirteen-acre property in 2004 in a manner that is, well, what’s the opposite of minimalist? My room was decorated with, among other things, a white-lacquered four-poster bed, a leopard-print bench, a Moroccan leather pouf, a woven wall hanging from the seventies, framed paparazzi photos and a collection of Adler’s signature ceramics and kitschy needlepoint pillows. But somehow it all worked. The hotel and its Eden-like grounds practically demand relaxation: guests can lounge under jaunty umbrellas by any of the three pools, in hammocks slung between palm trees or in butterfly chairs arranged around a firepit ringed by grapefruit trees. Late one afternoon, a couple padded by wearing gigantic sunglasses and the hotel’s matching bathrobes and slippers while room service waiters pedaled down the meandering pathways on snazzy oversized tricycles — stylish reminders that Palm Springs has entered a new golden age.

The city’s rebirth was a long time coming. After the glamour seeped out of Palm Springs in the seventies, along with the money, the town’s economy flagged and once revered buildings sank into disrepair. From an architectural standpoint, the recession here turned out to be a blessing in disguise: while wealthier surrounding cities, like Palm Desert and La Quinta, exploded with shopping centers and golf communities, Palm Springs lay dormant, its old buildings intact. Flash forward to the early nineties, when the Los Angeles and New York design cognoscenti realized they could buy and restore stylish midcentury modern weekend houses for a fraction of the cost elsewhere. Among the first to arrive, in 1993, was Jim Moore, the longtime creative director of GQ, who restored a 1960s Donald Wexler steel tract house and invited his photographer friends to use the place for photo shoots.

As with South Beach, whose renaissance in the late eighties was driven by a fashion crowd drawn to the neighborhood’s Art Deco style, Palm Springs’ revitalization was ignited by a new generation’s appreciation for its treasures. “Rediscovering modernism was the spark that fueled the fire,” says William Kopelk, president of the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation, one of three major preservation organizations in town. Since that time, the movement has shown no signs of flagging. “The houses that sold for $100,000 in the late nineties are selling for $500,000 to $1 million now,” he adds. “The so-called ugly ducklings of architecture have been transformed into swans.”

The pace of development here will only escalate. The city has issued more building permits in the past two years than at any other point in its history, paving the way for more than 4,000 residential units and several major hotels: a Mondrian, a Hard Rock and an unprecedented ten-story casino and spa resort owned by the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians, the city’s largest landholder. “In five years Palm Springs will look nothing like it does today,” notes Ken Lyon, a city planner. He says it cheerily enough (Palm Springs could use an economic boost), but in a place renowned for its frozen-in-time architecture, there’s something ominous about the prediction.

For a crash course in Palm Springs’ architectural uniqueness, you can’t do better than spend an afternoon with Robert Imber, the city’s de facto architecture historian and one of its most passionate preservationists. I had eagerly booked his three-hour tour, given twice daily, shortly after my pit stop at the Parker. The fifty-eight-year-old Imber, his gnomish features accentuated by octagonal eyeglasses, says he was “born living and breathing architecture.” He’s not exaggerating: while growing up in St. Louis, he’d ride his bike to new subdivisions and knock on doors, hoping for a glimpse inside. (“That stopped working when I was in my forties,” he says with a straight face.) For his bar mitzvah, he asked his parents for subscriptions to House Beautiful and Architectural Digest.

Imber’s depth of knowledge about every building in town is exhaustive and, sometimes for the tour goer, exhausting. As we drove along streets lined with shaggy palm trees and manicured privacy hedges in Las Palmas, one of the city’s tonier neighborhoods, he pointed out houses in every direction, rattling off a celebrity-home who’s who: Liberace’s house, with curlicued metal Ls on the garage and a fifteen-foot-tall candelabra on the lawn; Clark Gable and Carole Lombard’s traditional Spanish colonial; Lily Pad, Lily Tomlin’s getaway; Elizabeth Taylor’s estate; and the formerly futuristic House of Tomorrow, where Elvis and Priscilla Presley spent their honeymoon in 1967.

“This is the most important house in Palm Springs,” Imber declared as we rolled up to the Kaufmann House. Richard Neutra designed it in 1946 for Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., who commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build Fallingwater. Neutra described the steel and glass house, whose stone walls appear to sprout organically from its terrain, as “a machine in the garden” that juxtaposed a “man-made construct onto a wild, unrefined, natural setting” (at the time it was built, the house was surrounded by acres of rugged desert, with only one other structure in sight). Beth and Brent Harris bought it in 1993; with the help of the architecture firm Marmol Radziner and Associates, they embarked on a meticulous six-year restoration, even convincing a Utah quarry to reopen a long-closed section of its site so the veins of the new sandstone would match the old. Their efforts, and a subsequent spate of magazine articles, refocused national attention on Palm Springs, which was still struggling to recover from its economic downturn. The Harrises are now divorced, and on May 13, Christie’s will auction the house, with opening bids set at $15 million.

The ten blocks of downtown Palm Springs are home to a mishmash of styles — Spanish colonials with terra-cotta-tiled roofs; sculptural midcentury modern buildings — set against a backdrop of majestic mountains. At least that’s what it looks like today, pre–development boom. Preservationists are fighting to keep that eclectic character, trying to steer developers toward adapting old buildings for new uses instead of simply bulldozing them. Sidney Williams, associate curator and liaison for the architecture and design council at the Palm Springs Art Museum (and daughter-in-law of E. Stewart Williams, the local architect who designed it), has lived in Palm Springs for more than thirty years and treasures its village atmosphere. “I don’t want to see downtown turned into an urban mall,” she says. “We’re not an old community” — the city was founded in 1938 — “but we have fine examples of architecture, and it’s a legacy we should protect.”

The greatest challenge, according to Imber, is education. “People recognize that Colonial Williamsburg and Arts and Crafts bungalows and gingerbread Victorians are historic, but they don’t understand why these little glass boxes should be saved,” he said. “Locals grew up in them, so they’re easily dismissed.” Several sites downtown, including the sinuous Town and Country Center shopping complex, with its hidden public courtyard, and the Santa Fe Federal Savings Bank, which appears to float on tapered steel columns, have been in limbo for years as their future is hashed out between their developer-owner and the city council. Imber sees room for compromise: “We need growth; we need improvement. But we also need to retain what makes Palm Springs unique. Preservation and development don’t have to be at odds.” For proof, he said, just look at Santa Barbara, Santa Fe and Portland, Oregon; all three cities have chosen to revitalize their old buildings rather than tear them down. “But the community has to appreciate what it has and be willing to fight for it.”

“Palm Springs was very groovy in the mid-nineties, when I started coming here,” recalled Catherine Meyler as she sat in the light-flooded living room of her weekend house. “It was still unknown, and you could get amazing furniture for nothing.” Meyler, a Los Angeles–based location agent who was raised in southeast England, scored her iconic Neutra residence, designed in 1937 for the St. Louis socialite Grace Lewis Miller, for just $250,000 in 2000. She showed me pictures of the place when she bought it; it looked like a haunted house (or “a crack den,” Meyler offered). “But I figured, however awful it seemed, it’s still a Neutra,” she said chirpily. “If I stripped it down, how bad could it be?”

Her intuition was spot-on. She handed me some photographs that the acclaimed architecture photographer Julius Shulman took of the home in the late thirties. When I held the Shulman photos up to Meyler’s recently restored living room, the verity to the original design was startling. Here was the tiny thigh-high closet where Miller kept her suitcase; there was the gray-stained plywood built-in furniture; just beyond the walls of glass was the desert garden, returned to its former glory by a local landscape architect.

Inspired by Meyler’s streamlined interiors, on my last day in town I quit the house touring and devoted myself to that other quintessential Palm Springs activity: shopping. Armed with Trina Turk’s short list of must-see boutiques, I headed to the Galleria, a warren of quirky closet-sized stores, and made a beeline for Bon Vivant, Turk’s favorite home-accessories shop. (Besides her own, that is; the first-ever Trina Turk Residential shop, stocked with brightly colored pillows in Turk’s custom fabrics, Missoni beach towels and chic ice buckets, just opened in Palm Springs.) After fondling handmade California pottery and copper enamel plates, I fell for a shiny gold owl pendant necklace. At Turk’s clothing boutique, designed by Kelly Wearstler, who also did the bold interiors at the Viceroy hotel, up the road, I plucked a sweet big-buttoned black coat from the sale rack. I admired a $14,000 leather-upholstered bedroom set from the late sixties at ModernWay, the first midcentury modern furniture shop to open in Palm Springs, in 1999, then made my way to the gallerylike Studio 111, where I debated blowing several months’ rent on an original zebrawood Herman Miller desk.

My last few hours in the desert disappeared into the vortex that is the 111 Antique Mall, a glorious pileup of Sputnik lamps, Danish teak furniture, knickknacks and one-of-a-kind miscellany, where I discovered, to my surprise, that I secretly craved an $1,800 heart-shaped bed with shiny red sheets and a built-in transistor radio. Palm Springs can do that to a person. This is where the Parker Palm Springs was born: the flamboyant John Connell, an owner of the mall — he introduces himself as the Bitch — sent eight truckloads of retro furniture to the hotel at Jonathan Adler’s behest. Eyeing a coffee table from the fifties, I asked Connell about refinishing the scratched metal. His response? “Don’t you dare; I hate you! You make it look new and people will go, ‘Meh.’ Leave it as is and they’ll say, ‘That piece is fabulous.’” Its history makes it interesting, dings and all. Just like Palm Springs.

Native Intelligence: Tips for planning your trip to Palm Springs

When to Go

Summers in this desert city (population 45,000) are hot and dry, with temperatures frequently topping 100 degrees. High season, January through May, brings milder temperatures (averaging in the mid-70s) and bigger crowds. Palm Springs is a two-hour drive from Los Angeles International Airport; you can also fly directly to Palm Springs International Airport from eighteen North American cities.

To immerse yourself in midcentury modernism, visit during the annual house tours given by the Palm Springs Modern Committee in April (April 5 this year; for 2009, see psmodcom.com) or during Modernism Week (modernismweek.com), a ten-day festival held every year in mid-February. The event includes house tours organized by the Palm Springs Art Museum, talks by architects and designers and the famous Palm Springs Modernism Show, a weekend-long sale of vintage 20th-century furniture and decorative arts. Architecture buffs must take Robert Imber’s intensive three-hour Palm Springs Modern Tours (from $75; 760-318-6118; psmoderntours@aol.com), given in a minivan or on Segway scooters. Reserve far in advance; both private and group tours fill up fast.

Where to Stay

Colony Palms Hotel Built by the mob as a cover for a brothel and a gambling house in 1936, the Colony Palms has a brand-new identity, thanks to a splashy $16 million makeover by celebrity decorator Martyn Lawrence-Bullard. The stylish hotel, as well as its restaurant and spa, retains its Spanish colonial exterior, but its forty-eight guest rooms and eight casitas channel Morocco with intricately embroidered headboards, terra-cotta-colored concrete floors in the ground-level rooms and cotton-ticking-striped curtains. Double rooms from $229, suites from $329, casitas from $379. 572 N. Indian Canyon Dr.; 800-557-2187; colonypalmshotel.com.

Korakia Pensione This private and serene twenty-eight-room bed and breakfast is carved out of two Moroccan- and Mediterranean-inspired villas and has keyhole archways, heavy wooden doors and whitewashed walls; some accommodations have sunken bathtubs. It’s a hot spot for fashion photo shoots and low-key romantic getaways. On weekends, classic and foreign films are screened outdoors in a bougainvillea-planted courtyard close to the hotel’s two pools. Double rooms from $159, suites from $299. 257 S. Patencio Rd.; 760-864-6411; korakia.com.

Movie Colony Hotel Popular among visiting architects, the recently restored Movie Colony was designed in 1935 by the Swiss-born architect Albert Frey. Its thirteen rooms and three town houses are decorated with vintage furnishings and original Julius Shulman photographs; many have metal-railed balconies that resemble ships’ decks. Don’t skip the five-thirty alfresco happy hour, with Dean Martinis, a nod to the Rat Pack. Double rooms from $199, town houses from $299. 726 N. Indian Canyon Dr.; 888-953-5700; moviecolonyhotel.com.

Parker Palm Springs This storied 132-room, twelve-villa estate — it was California’s first Holiday Inn, then Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch and Merv Griffin’s Givenchy Resort — has a new lease on life, owing to designer Jonathan Adler’s outrageous makeover, in 2004. On the thirteen-acre landscaped grounds are two pétanque courts, three pools and the cheeky Palm Springs Yacht Club, which is actually a 16,500-square-foot spa. For breakfast there’s Norma’s (its caramelized waffle stuffed with tropical fruit is not to be missed) and for dinner Mister Parker’s, a formal wood-paneled lair billed as a “hangout for fops, flaneurs and assorted cronies.” Double rooms from $295, villas from $995. 4200 E. Palm Canyon Dr.; 760-770-5000; theparkerpalmsprings.com.

Viceroy Los Angeles interior designer Kelly Wearstler revamped the hotel from 2001 to 2003, infusing it with a wild Hollywood style. The sixty-eight rooms, including suites and villas, are now done up in a sophisticated white and black palette and have loads of mirrors and bright lemon yellow accents. The four-acre property encompasses three pools, the chic Citron restaurant and the decadent Estrella Spa, known for its indoor-outdoor treatments. Among the nice perks are complimentary “townie” bicycles and free yoga classes and guided hikes. Double rooms from $249, suites from $409, villas from $519. 415 S. Belardo Rd.; 800-670-6184; viceroypalmsprings.com.

To live like a local celebrity, if only for a night, book one of the city’s iconic houses. Beau Monde Villas rents the seven-bedroom, nine-bath, 4,000-square-foot neoclassical mansion formerly owned by Jack Warner, a founder of Warner Brothers ($3,700), as well as Frank Sinatra’s four-bedroom, seven-bath Twin Palms estate ($2,600), which has a piano-shaped pool and was the site of many legendary parties. 877-318-2090; beaumondevillas.com.

Where to Eat and Drink

Copley’s on Palm Canyon Chef and co-owner Andrew Manion Copley turns out creative Pacific Rim–inspired food, like ginger-encrusted Hawaiian opakapaka over wasabi potatoes, at his namesake restaurant, set in a hacienda that was once Cary Grant’s home. 621 N. Palm Canyon Dr.; 760-327-9555.

El Mirasol This local hangout is celebrated for its potent margaritas and authentic Mexican dishes, such as pollo en mole poblano (chicken in red mole sauce) and crisp chicharrón (pork rinds) in tomatillo sauce. 140 E. Palm Canyon Dr.; 760-323-0721.

Johannes Restaurant Minimalist interiors and an Austrian-inflected menu are the draws at Johannes, run by chef-owner Johannes Bacher. Start with a peach or cucumber martini and follow it with eight garlic-baked escargots and Bacher’s signature Wiener schnitzel, served with parsley potatoes and cranberries. 196 S. Indian Canyon Dr.; 760-778-0017.

Le Vallauris For more than thirty years, Le Vallauris has been the city’s top French restaurant. In good weather, forgo the refined dining room in favor of the romantic tree-shaded garden patio. The seared whitefish with mustard sauce and the roast rack of lamb with thyme and garlic are perennial favorites. 385 W. Tahquitz Canyon Way; 760-325-5059.

Melvyn’s The top attraction here—besides a restaurant that has hardly changed since it opened in 1975, menu included—is the late-night scene at its retro piano bar. Imagine a dance floor packed with an eclectic mix of energetic seniors, gaping twenty- and thirty-somethings and even the odd celebrity (during my visit, Will Ferrell sashayed in at 11 p.m.). 200 W. Ramon Rd.; 760-325-2323.

Where to Shop

Galleria Hidden within a 1940s arcade are ten small midcentury modern–focused galleries and shops, all worth a browse, particularly Bon Vivant, known for its reasonably priced housewares, pottery and glass. 457 N. Palm Canyon Dr.; 760-323-4576; palmspringsgalleria.com.

ModernWay The first midcentury modern furniture store to open in Palm Springs is still the go-to place for rare, well-priced finds, especially hot-ticket pieces — white-lacquered lounges, chrome tables, Lucite-and-mirror desks — from the sixties, as well as modernist pieces from the early seventies. 745 N. Palm Canyon Dr.; 760-320-5455; psmodernway.com.

111 Antique Mall It’s easy to get lost in this treasure (and bargain) hunter’s paradise, where you can wade through 12,000 square feet of period-appropriate furnishings and plenty of intriguing junk. 2005 N. Palm Canyon Dr.; 760-864-9390; info111mall.com.

Studio 111 Pop into this boutique for outstanding midcentury paintings, sculpture and furniture, plus contemporary works by local artists. 2675 N. Palm Canyon Dr.; 760-323-5104; studio111palmsprings.com.

Trina Turk and Trina Turk Residential Trina Turk’s clothing store sells Jackie O.–style eyewear and mod women’s dresses that are “perfect for a cocktail party by the pool,” says the designer. Turk’s new lifestyle shop, next door, displays vintage furniture and floor cushions upholstered in her hallmark graphic prints, as well as books on architecture, design and fashion and fine-art photographs by Turk’s husband, Jonathan Skow. 891 and 895 N. Palm Canyon Dr.; 760-416-2856; trinaturk.com.

What to Do

Moorten Botanical Garden Founded in 1938 by Patricia and Chester “Cactus Slim” Moorten — a botanist and a character actor, respectively — this one-acre plot now blooms with 3,000 varieties of exotic desert plants. There’s also a nursery on-site where you can buy cactus cuttings. 1701 S. Palm Canyon Dr.; 760-327-6555.

Palm Springs Aerial Tramway Palm Springs is famous for its stunning desert scenery. Adventurous hikers can trek the North or South Lykken trail or the pristine Indian Canyons (theindiancanyons.com), but to view the entire valley, with minimal effort and maximum impact — and to experience the otherworldliness of being practically teleported from the desert to a snowcapped peak — take the fifteen-minute tram ride to the top of Mount San Jacinto. 1 Tramway Rd.; 760-325-1391; pstramway.com.

Palm Springs Art Museum This vibrant museum showcases modern and contemporary works by Robert Motherwell, Mark di Suvero and Edward Ruscha; glass art; and Mesoamerican sculpture. An exhibition of roughly 150 images by the ninety-seven-year-old architecture photographer Julius Shulman is on display through May 4; if you miss it, you can pick up the companion book, Julius Shulman: Palm Springs, at the museum store. 101 Museum Dr.; 760-322-4800; psmuseum.org.

I’m standing outside a birthday cake of a building, a white stone mansion built in 1906. Just beyond it, paddleboats etch lazy circles on a green lake. Along the meandering paths of the surrounding Chapultepec Park, vendors hawk wrestling masks and skewered mangoes, and families picnic under centuries-old cypress trees. Although six of Mexico City’s most renowned museums lie within this 1,600-acre park, I’ve come for one small gem: the Casa del Lago cultural center, whose current exhibition has been drawing rave reviews.

But first I have to figure out how to get inside.

A gardener out front eventually points me to a door tucked discreetly beside a sweeping staircase: la galería. Within I discover a marble-floored room with low timber ceilings. Brightly colored sketches by the up-and-coming artist Marcos Castro explode like little fireworks on its white walls, depicting animals on eerie watercolor backgrounds. It’s an exhilarating find — edgy art in a pleasure palace on a lake? — though not entirely surprising. Earlier in the week, I saw exhibitions in a juice factory, a 16th-century church, a concrete-block warehouse, even a hollowed-out Japanese bus. Mexico City may have museums to rival any art capital’s, but to tap into what makes the city so vibrant today, you have to head a bit off the beaten path.

I’ve been lured back to Mexico City (locally referred to as the D.F., or Distrito Federal) in part by Abaseh Mirvali, the Iranian-American executive director of Fundación/Colección Jumex, one of the city’s most important contemporary-art spaces. We were introduced on a previous trip, and once she grasped my interest, both personal and professional, in art (I write about art, design and culture around the globe) and how little I’d managed to see on that particular visit, she stayed in touch, raving about the D.F.’s burgeoning art scene and detailing its great appeal: “Amazing weather, glamorous people, and it’s just a hop, skip and a jump away!” (Four to five hours, actually, on a nonstop flight from San Francisco or New York.) Inspired by her rallying cries and the city’s growing buzz, I’ve returned for an in-depth, art-centric look.

With its tangle of 5,348 neighborhoods and 18 million residents, Mexico City teems with head-swiveling contrasts and unexpected discoveries. It’s a chaotic place where corruption is rampant, stopping at traffic lights is regarded as optional, and the gap between the haves and the have-nots is of Grand Canyon scale. Downtown in the Centro Histórico, Aztec ruins bump up against 17th-century cathedrals and rock concerts in the Zócalo, the main square. Two miles southwest, in the chic neighborhoods of Roma and the Condesa, culture seekers drop by Art Deco galleries, and restaurants and bars thrum late into the night. In neighboring Polanco, Jaguars and BMWs cruise the tony shops and upscale eateries of Avenida Presidente Masaryk, Mexico City’s answer to Rodeo Drive. And at nearly every major intersection, vendors sell their wares from rickety carts: flowers, wooden stools, pineapples, piñatas, phone cards. You can take precautions to prevent stomachaches and robberies — two risks for travelers to this city — but there’s no way around sensory overload. For those of us drawn here, it’s the crackling energy and eye-popping street life that hook us.

The D.F. enjoys a rich artistic heritage, from the nationalist muralists of the 1920s to the much-fetishized Frida Kahlo to the modernists of the ’50s. After languishing for decades (largely because of conservative, narrowly focused museums and galleries), the contemporary-art scene roared back to life, and into the international spotlight, in the mid-’90s through the early 2000s with an influx of artists from abroad, a rise in alternative artist-run spaces, a fresh crop of risk-taking galleries and collectors and a spate of foreign exhibitions hailing the new wave of Mexican art, much of it indelibly provocative. For a show at New York’s P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in 2002, for example, Teresa Margolles filled a room with vaporized water that had been used to wash corpses in Mexico City’s morgues; atop a pile of stolen radios purchased on the city’s thriving black market, Miguel Calderón and Yoshua Okón displayed a video of themselves stealing a car radio.

Since then, the world’s curiosity about what’s emerging from Mexico City has snowballed, driven by forward-thinking galleries, by the D.F.’s increasingly influential, Art Basel–like México Arte Contemporáneo international fair (MACO), held every April, and by collectors hungry for the next big thing. And there’s been a renewed interest in the country’s creative output in general: witness the sixteen Oscar nominations last year for Mexican directors and their films (Babel, Pan’s Labyrinth, Children of Men) and the booming careers of such actors as Salma Hayek and architects including Enrique Norten and Ricardo Legorreta.

To take it all in, I make my base the design hotel Condesa DF, an informal clubhouse for the city’s young movers and shakers and the ideal spot for visitors, like me, seeking instant cultural entrée. The hotel is on one of the prettiest blocks in the Condesa, a neighborhood known for its jacaranda-shaded streets, Art Deco buildings and lush parks and plazas. (The area is also among Mexico City’s safest.) Hit hard by the earthquake of 1985, the Condesa was later revitalized by artists attracted to the abandoned buildings. High-concept shops and trendy restaurants soon followed and then, predictably, loft-style living and young professionals and rocketing real estate. A stroll through the neighborhood still turns up an appealing mix of the new (minimalist glass-walled bars, sleek apartment buildings) and the old (artisans constructing wooden bookshelves on the sidewalk; dark, smoky cantinas). Most of the artists have since been priced out, but their influence remains: the Condesa and adjacent Roma are home to many top galleries.

Condesa DF, the area’s first hotel, opened in 2005. Carved out of a triangular 1920s building, it’s among the chicest spots in the city, with quirky interiors (cowhide, dark woods, bright florals) by the Paris designer India Mahdavi and a fashionable rooftop bar. At breakfast one morning, the gregarious Rafael Micha, one of the hotel’s managing partners, gestures around the open-air courtyard café, name-dropping all the way: “Next to us, those two giving an interview are two of the hottest young fashion designers in the city. Over there, she’s curating a show on contemporary Mexican art in Salzburg.” And so on and so forth, table by table: Enrique Rubio, a founder of the four-year-old MACO, which has made contemporary art accessible to a new generation of Mexicans and further fanned the desire of international collectors. Ricardo Pandal O., the cultural promoter and entrepreneur who recently opened a music club and gallery on a reinvigorated block of the Centro Histórico (currently undergoing a renewal, thanks to investments by local billionaire Carlos Slim Helú, the second-richest man in the world). And I’ve just missed Diego Luna, the Mexican heartthrob who starred with Gael García Bernal in Y Tu Mamá También.

Shortly after my plane landed, I made a beeline to meet Mirvali at Fundación/Colección Jumex, the largest private collection of contemporary art in Latin America, its 1,700-and-counting pieces amassed by Eugenio López Alonso, the forty-year-old heir to the Jumex juice fortune. A keystone of the thriving contemporary scene, it’s a favorite of insiders and is little known to anyone else — largely because it’s hidden in a juice factory forty-five minutes from the Condesa and is open to the public by appointment only (the collection is scheduled to move to a larger, more accessible museum in Polanco in 2008 or 2009). Alonso, who is on the board of trustees at both the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art, doles out $2 million a year through his foundation to support Mexico City’s contemporary-art spaces and has helped nurture the careers of many Mexican artists, including Gabriel Orozco, by displaying their early work alongside that of more established, international artists.

“Eugenio was one of the first people to put an Orozco on the same level as a [Damien] Hirst; he felt art should be valued solely on the quality of the work, not on where the artist comes from,” Mirvali told me as we walked through the cavernous, naturally lit gallery. “He challenged people to look more closely at what was coming out of Mexico.” Today, biannual shows by a changing roster of curators draw from the eclectic collection. Exhibition themes vary, but the one constant is the democratic display: pieces by up-and-coming locals (“tattooed” photographs by Dr. Lakra, a light installation by Iñaki Bonillas) next to work by international stars, like Francis Alÿs, a Belgian who has worked in Mexico City for the past twenty years, and the late American minimalist and conceptual artist Sol LeWitt. French curator Michel Blancsubé designed the show I saw, transforming the gallery into an artwork labyrinth, complete with dead ends and movable walls and secret rooms. I had the electrifying sense that there could be something extraordinary just around the corner — much as I would later in the city outside that white cube.

Mirvali accompanied me back to the city. As we passed from the industrial outskirts to the heart of Polanco, potholed roads and auto-body shops gave way to sun-dappled streets lined with filigreed mansions and heavily guarded jewelry stores. Impeccably dressed women slipped out of chauffeured cars and into Chanel and Louis Vuitton boutiques, and model types in big sunglasses and stilettos catwalked down the uneven sidewalks. Mirvali deposited me at the gallery of her friend Enrique Guerrero, a dapper man in a chartreuse polo shirt and with a trim mustache who, she told me, could provide the long view on the art scene, having been entrenched in it for seventeen years. Like most galleries in the D.F., his was discreet — no sign, just a buzzer — save for its bright orange façade (the hue changes for each exhibition, according to the artist’s preference). Workers were mounting a new show, Rubén Gutiérrez’s colored-pencil drawings of stills from American movies.

In his office, Guerrero explained the particular challenges facing the local art market. First, until recently there were few Mexican collectors, a situation that forced artists and galleries to rely on international buyers. Second, as is often the case in Europe, the government controls most of the museums (“like the French model but without the funding,” as one museum director bitterly joked). And because the previous administration “cared more about control and power than culture,” Guerrero told me, “the past six years have been a challenge for contemporary art. Everything good that happened with the scene happened in spite of the government.”

To better understand the evolution of the art boom, I track down Miguel Calderón, an enfant terrible of the early contemporary scene, known for his experimental films and envelope-pushing artworks (such as the stolen-radio installation in New York). In the early 1990s, he was among a group of artists who began opening nonprofit alternative spaces in which to show their work. At the time, the local art landscape was stagnant, and, as Calderón tells me, “if you wanted something — nightlife, a place to show your work — you had to create it. And if you wanted to get attention, you had to be subversive.” La Panadería, named for the former bakery he and Yoshua Okón took over in 1994, gained renown for provocative exhibitions, film screenings and impromptu rock concerts (it closed in 2002, as artists were decamping to build their careers at more mainstream galleries).

Also pushing things forward was Gabriel Orozco, who in 1999 opened a gallery, Kurimanzutto, with his friends José Kuri and Monica Manzutto. “There was no other commercial gallery ready to commit to the new generation of artists,” Manzutto recalls, speaking in her light-flooded office in the Condesa, where she brokers sales — ranging from $9,000 newspaper collages by rising star Jonathan Hernández to a $1.5 million Orozco sculpture — to collectors including Charles Saatchi and Craig Robbins. “But we had no money. So we decided to open without a space.” The nomadic gallery has since become one of Mexico City’s most respected, but for now it continues to debut in a new location with each exhibition. (Manzutto and Kuri recently bought a compound in San Miguel Chapultepec, just west of the Condesa, and are planning to turn the existing buildings there into permanent exhibition spaces next year.)

I stop by the current space, a concrete-block warehouse the size of an airplane hangar, to view sculptures by Gabriel Kuri, José’s brother, of random objects arranged on graphlike bases. Exiting the gallery still pondering his work, I stumble on a fruit and vegetable market shaded by bubblegum-pink tarps and manned by a gauntlet of vendors proffering slices of papaya on the points of their knives. I wander through the Technicolor spectacle, fingering bags of cactus leaves, inhaling the scents of guavas and boiled corn, wondering at an aquarium jam-packed with hundreds of tiny crawling turtles. It’s all a bit surreal but unmistakably Mexico City. Where else can you buy a million-dollar sculpture and a chili-dusted mango within moments of each other?

Mexico city’s art scene shows no sign of slowing down. The country’s art is a hot commodity, and collectors are snapping up pieces everywhere from Art Basel Miami Beach to the Frieze Art Fair, in London. Mexico’s own MACO fair has doubled in size since its inception; this year’s featured eighty-five galleries and more visitors than ever before. Young artists who used to look to Europe and the United States for their influences are now finding inspiration much closer to home. A new generation is emerging, buoyed by the growing art community and an unprecedented sense of opportunity.

“How does living here inspire you?” I asked the artist Gabriel de la Mora on my last day in town. We sat in his studio in Roma, surrounded by the latest pieces in his series of “drawings,” portraits made of human and synthetic hair. The late-afternoon sun filtered in through arched ivy-covered windows, glinting off antique cabinets filled with religious artifacts and shimmering on the parquet floors. “In Mexico City, there is corruption, chaos, beauty, creativity, humor —the best and worst of everything,” de la Mora said, emphasizing his words with little jabs of a paintbrush. “André Breton said once that Mexico is the most surreal place on Earth, and I believe that. I always carry my camera, because everywhere I go, I see something weird and surprising. The best performances and installations are right here on the streets: real life, real art.”

Mexico City: Insider Advice

What to know & where to go in Mexico City.

When calling the telephone numbers below from the United States, first dial 011-52-55, unless noted otherwise.

When to Go

Mexico City’s high altitude—nearly 7,400 feet above sea level—keeps the climate mild year-round. During the coolest (and smoggiest) months, January through March, it rarely drops below 50 degrees; the hottest months are April and May, when temperatures can reach the 80s. July is the rainiest month. Culture seekers should consider coming in late March, for the Festival de México en el Centro Histórico (fchmexico.com), or in early April, for the México Arte Contemporáneo international art fair (macomexico.com).

Getting Around

The city is safer than it used to be, but visitors should remain vigilant. The most important rule is never to hail a cab off the street, as it may be a rogue; rather, ask your hotel or restaurant to call a sitio, or radio taxi. For a hassle-free experience, have your hotel arrange a car and driver for the day.

Where to Stay

Condesa DF Forty rooms with walnut headboards, sculptural pedestal sinks and lime green floral prints. The Top Suite, which has a wraparound deck and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lush Parque España, feels like a penthouse apartment. Light sleepers, beware: the noise from the popular rooftop bar, courtyard restaurant and basement dance club carries throughout the hotel. Double rooms from $175, Top Suite $395. 102 Avda. Veracruz, Condesa; 5241-2600; condesadf.com.

Four Seasons Hotel México, D.F. This fortresslike hotel is an oasis in the middle of the city: no noise permeates its walls, and once you’re inside it’s easy to forget where you are. The hacienda-inspired building surrounds a lovely courtyard and fountain. Service is polished and anticipatory; you can avail yourself of twenty-four-hour multilingual concierges, private cultural tours led by art historians and other perks. Double rooms from $360. 500 Paseo de la Reforma, Juárez; 800-819-5053; fourseasons.com.

Habita Hotel Featuring a sleek frosted-glass façade designed by Enrique Norten of TEN Arquitectos and thirty-six spare, airy guest rooms, Habita is a minimalist’s dream come true. It’s steps from the tony shops of Avenida Presidente Masaryk, which is worth exploring if you can tear yourself away from the hotel’s gorgeous terrace, with its pool and see-and-be-seen bar. Double rooms from $195. 201 Avda. Presidente Masaryk, Polanco; 800-223-6800; hotelhabita.com.

Hippodrome Hotel The Condesa’s newest hotel is in a beautifully restored 1931 Art Deco building near the Parque México. The sixteen earth-toned guest rooms have marble floors; the tequila-filled minibars are a nice touch. Off the lobby at Hip Kitchen, chef Richard Sandoval turns out contemporary Mexican cuisine with Asian, French and American accents. Double rooms from $230. 188 Avda. México, Condesa; 1454-4599; kerryhotels.net.

W Mexico City Open since 2003, the first W in Latin America references the region in subtle, playful ways: black volcanic rock in the lobby, an adobe Mexican-style sauna in the spa and a woven hammock in every guest room. Ask for a room on a high floor for sweeping city views from the glass-walled bathroom (yes, there are blinds). Double rooms from $369. 252 Campos Elíseos, Polanco; 877-946-8357; whotels.com.

Where to Eat

Prevent stomach problems by drinking only bottled water; at restaurants, order drinks sin hielo, without ice.

Águila y Sol

Chef and cookbook author Martha Ortiz’s sophisticated alta cocina mexicana restaurant has attracted culinary pilgrims since it opened, in 2002. Start your meal with a rosewater-infused cocktail and sea bass seviche; move on to pork loin in yellow mole with gingered mango. And save room for dessert: mamey (a West Indian fruit) custard topped with edible gold leaf and carnation preserves. 229 Avda. Emilio Castelar, Polanco; 5281-8354.

El Bajío

This local favorite, helmed by chef Carmen Titita Ramírez Degollado, is renowned for its rustic Mexican dishes, like the famous mole de Xico and chipotle broth with bone marrow. Breakfast and lunch only. 2709 Avda. Cuitlahuac, Obrero Popular; 5234-3763.

Le Cirque

The restaurant arrived in Mexico City in 2002, bringing Sirio Maccioni’s beloved glamour, and Le Cirque’s legendary French-inflected cuisine, south of the border. Expect legions of foreign businessmen and ladies who lunch. Jackets required. 700 Avda. Mariano Escobedo, Anzures; 5263-8881.

Izote

Celebrated chef Patricia Quintana puts a spin on indigenous, pre-Hispanic ingredients at this understated, elegant spot. If it’s on the menu, try the seasonal escamoles (ant roe), and finish with a traditional café de olla, coffee flavored with brown sugar and cinnamon. 513 Avda. Presidente Masaryk, Polanco; 5280-1671.

Pujol

Rising-star chef Enrique Olvera’s spare, gallerylike restaurant is the perfect backdrop for his artfully presented modern Mexican dishes. Go for the seven-course chef’s tasting menu, which may include sea bass al pastor with pineapple sauce and cilantro puree or four-corn mesquite soup with jellied mayonnaise. 254 Francisco Petrarca, Polanco; 5545-4111.

Restaurante Lamm This sleek eatery serves Mexican fusion— medregal in cream sauce with tequila and lemon, crab ravioli with Mayan honey sauce—on a partially glass-enclosed redwood deck in the courtyard of a century-old mansion. Also on the property are art galleries, a high-end jewelry shop and a design-focused bookstore. 99 Avda. álvaro Obregón, Roma; 5514-8501.

Nightlife

Cibeles

With its chic vintage look (exposed-brick walls, leather couches) and glossy red bar, this new Roma bar attracts a glam local crowd. 17 Plaza Villa de Madrid, Roma; 5208-2029.

Zinco Jazz Club

Jazz aficionados flock to the candlelit subterranean club, housed in a former bank vault, for concerts and late-night jam sessions by major international musicians. 20 Motolinía, Centro; 5512-3369.

Where to Shop

For fine Mexican handicrafts (embroidered textiles, silver jewelry, carved wooden sculptures), your best bets are the Bazaar de Sábado arts and crafts market in San ángel (Saturday only) and the exquisite gift shop at the Museo de Arte Popular (11 Revillagigedo, Centro; 5510-2201; map.org.mx), a new folk-art museum. For antiques, gallery owner Monica Manzutto recommends Antigüedades San Cristobal (87 Avda. Durango, Roma; 5207-8821); for custom furniture and reupholstered vintage finds, explore French designer Emmanuel Picault’s Chic by Accident (180 Calle Colima, Roma; 5514-5723).

Where the Art Is

Galleries

Here’s your cheat sheet for a day of gallery-hopping:

Galería Enrique Guerrero 1549 Calle Horacio, Polanco; 5280-2941; galeriaenriqueguerrero.com.

Galería Nina Menocal 93 Calle Zacatecas, Roma; 5564-7209; ninamenocal.com.

Galería OMR 54 Plaza Rio de Janeiro, Roma; 5511-1179; galeriaomr.com.

Garash Galería 49 Avda. álvaro Obregón, Roma; 5207-9858; garashgaleria.com.

Kurimanzutto Call for current location. 5256-2408; kurimanzutto.com.

Proyectos Monclova 244 Calle Colima, Roma; 5506-7319; proyectosmonclova.com.

Trolebús Galería Calle Guadalajara at Avda. Veracruz, Condesa; 5456-8168.

Museums

Casa del Lago Juan José Arreola This lakeside cultural center hosts contemporary-art exhibitions, film screenings and dance, theater and music performances. Antiguo Bosque de Chapultepec; 5286-6457

Fundación/Colección Jumex

The largest private collection of contemporary art in Latin America. A major Kiki Smith retrospective is up through October. Appointment required; 272 Vía Morelos, Sta. María Tulpetlac, Ecatepec (forty-five minutes outside the city); 5775-8188; lacoleccionjumex.org.

Laboratorio Arte Alameda

A multimedia museum carved out of a 16th-century church. 7 Doctor Mora, Centro; 5510-2793; artealameda.inba.gob.mx.

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Internacional Rufino Tamayo Eclectic exhibitions range from contemporary African photography to ’60s and ’70s New York painting (through September 19). Paseo de la Reforma and Calle Gandhi, Polanco; 5286-6519; museotamayo.org.

Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes

A grand concert hall and museum with an Art Nouveau exterior and an Art Deco interior. The Ballet Folklórico de México performs here every Wednesday and Sunday. 1 Avda. Juárez, Centro; 5521-9251; cnca.gob.mx/palacio/museo.htm.

Museo Nacional de Antropología

Archaeological and ethnographic treasures from Mexico’s pre-Columbian cultures; if you’ve got time for a flyby only, the must-see galleries are the Mayan, Aztec and Teotihuacán rooms. Paseo de la Reforma and Calle Gandhi, Polanco; 5553-6386; mna.inah.gob.mx.

A Frida Pilgrimage

This year marks the centennial of Frida Kahlo’s birth. Celebrate the artist’s vibrant spirit with a visit to her home, the cobalt blue Museo Frida Kahlo (247 Calle Londres, at Del Carmen, Coyoacán; 5554-5999; museofridakahlocasaazul.org), filled with personal artifacts (her back braces, her easel), original furnishings and artwork by Kahlo and her husband, the famed muralist Diego Rivera. You’ll want to stop at Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo (Calle Diego Rivera, San ángel; 5550-1189), but the largest collection of Kahlo’s and Rivera’s works is at the Museo Dolores Olmedo Patiño (5843 Avda. México, Xochimilco; 5555-1016; museodoloresolmedo.org), a renovated 16th-century hacienda formerly owned by a glamorous philanthropist. To see Rivera’s murals, head to the Palacio Nacional (Avda. Pino Suárez, Centro), on the east side of the bustling Zócalo.