For fans of architecture, Mexico City offers a bounty of sites to explore. Like Rome and Delhi, the city is a palimpsest of empires, encompassing the pre-Aztec Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan on the outskirts, with imposing monuments like the Pyramid of the Sun; the ruins of the Templo Mayor, built 1,200 years later by the Aztecs; and a cathedral erected atop them during the colonial period. Its architecture also traces a succession of movements: Art nouveau landmarks like the Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Gran Hotel Ciudad de México reflect French design traditions of the late-19th and early 20th centuries, while mid-20th-century modernism found its own expression in buildings like the immense Central Library at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, its façades covered in large, intricate mosaic murals.

Pritzker Prize-winning Luis Barragán was at the forefront of the Mexican modernist movement, and the residences he designed exemplify his form of Mexican minimalism, blending into the landscape and playing with light, color and shadow. His former home and studio, Casa Luis Barragán, built in 1948 in Miguel Hidalgo, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. Preserved as a museum, it contains his personal effects, furniture and paintings just as he left them. I toured it a few years ago, and on my latest trip to Mexico City, I set out to discover more of his work.

That search led me to the Barragán-designed Casa Prieto López, now known as Casa Pedregal, named after the vast volcanic lava field on which it stands. In the 1940s, Diego Rivera, whose Anahuacalli museum is nearby, was the first to recognize the potential of this barren landscape, a vision that influenced Barragán to purchase 850 acres and develop it. Casa Pedregal became the first home he built in what is now the upscale Jardines del Pedregal neighborhood.