Long before Narvarte existed, the land was known as Valle Estrella, owned by Spanish aristocrat Pedro de Monteleón y Terranova. In the late 1700s, Felipe de Jesús de Nalvarte acquired it and built Hacienda de Nalvarte — the name that popular usage eventually softened into “Narvarte.” After the Revolution, José Escandón — from the same Escandón family behind the colonia bearing their name and San Miguel Chapultepec's 1913 founding — inherited the hacienda in 1914 and began subdividing it for housing. American businessman Herbert Lewis later acquired the property and finished the job. The colonia proper took shape between 1940 and 1950, laid out along the old Río de la Piedad — now the Viaducto Miguel Alemán, and the source of neighboring Piedad Narvarte's name — planned from the outset as a modern residential development in Functionalist, Art Deco, and California-style architecture, with wide avenues and landscaped medians rather than a plain grid.

A monument to Ethiopia, and the emperor who came to say thank you

The neighborhood's most surprising landmark isn't there anymore. The Glorieta de Etiopía, inaugurated in 1954 at the intersection of Avenida Cuauhtémoc and Xola, commemorated one of Mexico's more consequential diplomatic stands: when Italy invaded and occupied Ethiopia in the 1930s, only five countries backed Ethiopian sovereignty before the League of Nations — the Soviet Union, the United States, New Zealand, Haiti, and Mexico. In June 1954, Emperor Haile Selassie I personally traveled to Mexico City to thank the country, and the glorieta was named in Ethiopia's honor at that visit; a nearby hotel was renamed Hotel Suites Emperador for him, and Ethiopia itself later named a plaza “Plaza México” in return. The traffic circle itself is gone now — it was demolished at the end of the 1970s to build Metro Line 3 — but the name survives as the Etiopía metro station, one of the few in the world named for a country with no local street to match.

Agustín Lara, and what the neighborhood became

Composer Agustín Lara, one of the most celebrated songwriters in Mexican history, lived in Narvarte during part of his life, drawn to what was then a solidly middle-and-upper-class residential district — his actual house-museum is in Veracruz, not here, but Narvarte was genuinely part of his world.

What's happening here right now, in real numbers

Two-bedroom rents in Narvarte range from about $15,000 to $35,000-plus pesos a month, with the full range across the neighborhood running $5,000 to $37,000; commercial space rents for 200-400 pesos per square meter. Growth here is described by analysts as “selective continuity,” not an explosive jump — and the city's own urban development agency, SEDUVI, specifically credits public investment in road rehabilitation and service upgrades for driving up property values in already-consolidated areas like this one.

What outlasts a monument to an emperor

If a whole diplomatic monument — one significant enough for an emperor to visit in person — could be torn out of the ground in the 1970s to make way for a subway line, that's a fair reminder of what public infrastructure investment actually changes: streets, transit, what's under the pavement. SEDUVI's road rehab and service upgrades work the same way here — real, and genuinely reflected in rising property values, but ending at the curb. What happens between there and your kitchen tap is still entirely down to your own building's plumbing, monument or no monument next door.

Sources

  • “¿Qué significa Narvarte? Este es el origen del nombre de esta colonia de clase media,” Radio Fórmula.
  • “La colonia Narvarte y su origen,” Propiedades.com.
  • “Un recorrido por la clásica colonia Narvarte en la CDMX,” Sopitas.
  • “¿Por qué se llama así la Glorieta de Etiopía?,” El Heraldo de México.
  • “¿Por qué existe el Metro Etiopía si no hay ninguna calle llamada así?,” Chilango.
  • “La colonia de la CDMX donde vivió Agustín Lara es también la nueva favorita para comer y pasear,” Food and Pleasure.
  • “Comprar departamento en la Narvarte: Guía de inversión 2026,” Engel & Völkers Mexico City.
  • “Gentrificación: ¿cuánto cuesta rentar en la colonia Narvarte?,” El Heraldo de México.