Porfirian-Era Icon · Since 1876
La Ópera
Mexico City, Mexico · Historic Mexican Restaurant & Bar
The story
La Ópera began as a French-style pastry shop in 1876 and moved to its present address in 1895, becoming an exceptionally sumptuous restaurant-bar. Gilded plasterwork, carved dark wood, mirrors, frosted glass, marble floors and red-lined booths preserve the cosmopolitan taste of Porfirian Mexico; a bullet hole traditionally attributed to Pancho Villa adds to its mythology.
Why La Ópera is iconic
It combines a genuinely spectacular nineteenth-century interior with Mexico City’s cantina culture and a full restaurant menu—grand, theatrical and rooted in the political and literary history of the capital.
Selected by Ernst Aben · Information reviewed July 2026
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