Sanborns Casa de los Azulejos

The story

Sanborns opened its flagship restaurant in the eighteenth-century Casa de los Azulejos in 1919. The main restaurant occupies a soaring covered courtyard surrounded by tiled arcades, painted walls, iron galleries and a stained-glass roof; elsewhere the palace preserves murals including José Clemente Orozco’s Omniscience.

Why Sanborns Casa de los Azulejos is iconic

Few everyday restaurants inhabit architecture of this calibre. A full Mexican meal is served inside one of the capital’s most recognisable Baroque palaces, making the building part of ordinary city life rather than a sealed monument.

Selected by Ernst Aben · Information reviewed July 2026