Doctores

South of the Chapultepec Aqueduct, where the water reached the Salto del Agua fountain and the city surrendered to the Garita de Belén, an emblematic neighborhood of Mexico City was born.

Emerging in 1889 from what were the Potreros de Indianilla, that eastern portion of the Romita fields, the Doctores neighborhood began as a promise of modernity envisioned by The Mexican City Property Syndicate Limited . Although its streets had already seen footsteps since 1895, its official founding was not recognized until 1906.

When the area was called Bethlehem, it was a refuge for religious orders who built convents, chapels, and schools. However, the Reform Laws stripped the Church of its properties and allowed the construction of the Bethlehem Prison. This prison operated between 1863 and 1900, until it was replaced by the "Black Palace" of Lecumberri.

The neighborhood's redemption came with science. In 1905, the General Hospital of Mexico opened its doors, the result of the vision of Roberto Gayol and Eduardo Liceaga. Because of this, the streets shed their anonymity and were adorned with the surnames of the most illustrious physicians of the 19th and 20th centuries. Thus, the map became a pantheon of scholars, and the neighborhood forever known as the Doctors' Colony.

Among its notable buildings is the Centro Escolar Revolución, built in 1934 on the ruins of the old prison, a building adorned by the brushes of Fermín Revueltas and Raúl Anguiano. Other landmarks include the Privada de la Requena, the legendary Arena México—the Mexico Cathedral, a temple of masks and legends—and the former home of Porfirio Díaz, as well as Avenida Chapultepec 18, the old Televicentro where television first went on the air in 1955 and where, after the 1985 earthquake, the face of national television was rebuilt.

Doctores remains one of the capital's most important areas. Among its neighborhoods and avenues, the echo of old streetcars seems to blend with the bustle of its markets, a reminder that this corner of the capital brings together architecture, science, gastronomy, wrestling, and the foundations of a city undergoing modernization.