Condesa traces back to the Hacienda de Tacubaya, inherited by the Condesa de Miravalle — the same countess whose land also became Roma. “Hipódromo” comes from a different piece of that history: the Jockey Club de México built a racetrack on part of the land that operated until 1920. When the area was officially subdivided as Condesa in 1927, the developers made a deliberate choice — instead of imposing a new street grid, they kept the old track's elliptical shape. Ámsterdam street is literally the old racetrack oval. Architect Leonardo Noriega and engineer Javier Francisco Stávoli Llamas designed Parque México the same year around that same curve, with not a single straight path in it. Roughly 250 buildings from this era are now registered as artistic or historic monuments.

September 19, 2017

Condesa became the defining image of that earthquake. The building at Nuevo León 238 collapsed that morning — one of the most widely covered single collapses in the country, part of more than 40 buildings that came down across Condesa, Roma, Del Valle, Narvarte, and a handful of other colonias. Citywide, the quake damaged 12,253 buildings and destroyed 38, killing 228 people.

What's happening in Condesa right now, in real numbers

Commercial rents in Hipódromo Condesa rose 25% between 2023 and 2025 alone; industry figures from Canirac (the national restaurant chamber) put commercial rent increases across Roma and Condesa together as high as 40%. The churn is real: barely half the restaurants that open in Roma and Condesa survive past two years. Traditional neighborhood businesses — corner stores, tortillerías, hardware shops — have been closing or relocating to make room for gyms, spas, cafés, and laundromats, while short-term Airbnb-style listings kept climbing through early 2025.

What the restaurant math tells you

Condesa's restaurant math is the tell: if barely half the restaurants that open here survive two years, that's not just a neighborhood having a moment — it means commercial space is being gutted and rebuilt on an unusually fast cycle, over and over, by different contractors with different standards each time. The same logic applies upstairs, which is exactly what makes Condesa hard to generalize about: two apartments in the same building can have been renovated years apart, by completely different people, to completely different standards. That's precisely the situation point-of-use filtration is designed to make irrelevant — you're covered either way.

Sources

  • “Condesa: en dónde se encontraba el hipódromo que dio nombre a esta emblemática colonia de la CDMX,” Infobae.
  • “Conoce la historia de la colonia más visitada: Hipódromo Condesa,” Más por Más.
  • Parque México — Joya art déco de la Hipódromo Condesa, official site; Universidad Anáhuac México historical photo tour.
  • Anexo: Edificios colapsados en la Ciudad de México por el terremoto de Puebla de 2017, Wikipedia.
  • Terremoto de Puebla de 2017, Wikipedia — citywide damage and casualty figures.
  • “'Gentrificación selectiva' encarece rentas en CDMX hasta 94%,” La Jornada.
  • “Gentrificación 'devora' restaurantes en Roma y Condesa en CDMX,” Milenio.
  • “Cómo el boom turístico está transformando la Condesa, el barrio más cool de CDMX,” elDiarioAR.