Mexico City—also known as La Ciudad, La Capital, México, el Distrito Federal, or simply “De Efe” (D.F.) for short—often astounds first-time visitors with its disarming combination of Old World charm and New World sophistication. The city lures visitors with a long list of superlatives—it’s the oldest and highest city in North America, one of the largest in the world, and the only metropolis with three UNESCO World Heritage Sites within its city limits.

Despite its epic sprawl, it can be a remarkably attractive city, at least in certain areas—the downtown Centro Histórico, lined with colonial mansions and churches; broad, elegant Paseo de la Reforma, lined with office buildings and first-class hotels; the art deco architecture, galleries, and cafés of the Roma and Condesa neighborhoods; and the quiet cobblestone streets of Coyoacán and San Ángel in the south.

Museum-lovers could spend days, even weeks, touring all the different exhibits of art, history, archaeology, and popular culture. Architect enthusiasts can see every kind of building from 2000-year-old pyramids to Latin America’s highest skyscraper. And lovers of the good life won’t want to miss the fantastic food and the epic, dawn-chasing nightlife for which the city is famous.

But it’s the little discoveries that are addictive. A cantina in continuous operation for seven decades, a used bookshop specializing in 19th-century engravings, street-corner vendors selling blue-corn quesadillas, a colonial-era plazuela (little plaza) seemingly lost to all but local inhabitants—all conspire to pull you under the city’s spell.

At the same time, Mexico City sometimes seems as if it’s hurtling from one disaster to the next. The city is reportedly sinking at a rate of several inches per year as wells suck the water table dry beneath the spongy lake bed upon which the city was laid out in the 16th century. The legendary air pollution has improved noticeably in the last few years, but it’s still pretty bad. Nearly one-fifth of Mexico’s population lives in the capital’s metro area, and every bus from the provinces brings in yet more fortune-seekers, unfazed by the occasional 7.0 temblor.

Crazed? Definitely. But the amazing thing is how well the city works, how it reaches well beyond mere survival. You can zip across town by underground Metro or glide slowly around the Centro Histórico in a bicitaxi (pedicab). Dig into a steaming chile-and-cheese tamale served by a sidewalk vendor for $.35 while standing outside a $200-a-night hotel. Catch a classic Mexican film at a local cineclub, then stroll through one of Latin America’s most beautiful urban parks. Climb aboard a brightly painted trajinera (Mexican-style gondola) and disappear down the shaded waterways of Xochimilco. Aztec temples and Catholic cathedrals, punk rockers and mariachi serenaders, poverty-stricken slums and walled villas; they’re all part of the phantasmagoric heart of mexicanidad (Mexicanness) that is Mexico City. The longer you stay, the more intriguing it all seems to become.

Mexico City has always been huge and vibrant, but in the decades that the country lived under a one-party political system and a closed economy, it also had a provincial feel, closed off from the rest of the world. No longer. Visitors these days will find dozens of upscale restaurants serving world-class Mexican and international food, as well as unexpected fusions of the two. Galleries are showing the latest experimental art, Mexican cinema is on the rise, and young writers are producing all sorts of new fiction—much of it inspired by the streets of the city itself. The city has reinvented itself a thousand times since it was founded by the Aztecs in 1325, and it’s at it again.

 Many casual visitors to Mexico arrive in the capital by plane, take one look at the traffic and air pollution, and make an immediate beeline for the nearest exit, heading to the coastal resorts, colonial cities, or, basically, anywhere else. It’s their loss. As huge and environmentally challenged as it is, Mexico City is one of the most fascinating and vibrant cauldrons of humanity in the world, and anyone with a taste for cities can’t afford to miss it.