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Where to Stay in Oaxaca City: Centro vs. Jalatlaco's Mural Lanes

Centro puts you steps from the Zócalo, the markets and the mezcal bars. Jalatlaco is the quiet, mural-covered barrio everyone photographs. Here's the honest call on where to stay in Oaxaca City.

If you’re working out where to stay in Oaxaca City, it usually comes down to two names: the Centro, where everything happens, or Jalatlaco, the cobblestoned barrio with the murals that’s all over everyone’s camera roll. They’re a ten-minute walk apart and they feel like different decades. Picking right matters more than people think.

I came to Oaxaca for a long weekend in 2019 and left a week and a half later having extended my flight twice. The food does that to you. The first night I ate a tlayuda the size of a steering wheel from a comal cart and just sort of stared into the middle distance. Let me save you the indecision on where to base yourself.

The Centro Histórico is the heart — the Zócalo (main square), the gorgeous green-stone church of Santo Domingo, the Andador walking street, and crucially the markets: Mercado 20 de Noviembre with its smoky meat hall, and Benito Juárez next door for chocolate, chapulines (yes, the grasshoppers — get them with lime and chili, they’re great), and cheese pulled into ropes.

Staying in Centro means you roll out of bed into the action. The mezcalerías, the rooftop bars looking at Santo Domingo lit up gold at night, the coffee, the galleries — all on your doorstep. For a first visit and a short trip, this convenience is hard to argue with. You waste zero time getting anywhere.

The food right here is incredible but pick carefully. The restaurants ringing the Zócalo are tourist-priced and just okay. Walk two or three blocks off the square and quality jumps while prices drop. My standing tip: go into the 20 de Noviembre meat hall (the pasillo de humo, the smoke corridor), buy your cut of meat from a butcher, they grill it in front of you, then you carry it to a table and buy tortillas, salsa, grilled onions and nopales separately. It’s chaos and it’s perfect and it’s a few dollars.

The honest downside of Centro: it’s busy and getting busier. High season and around Día de Muertos it’s packed, and the prettiest blocks have a real tourist sheen now. It’s brilliant but it’s not quiet, and it’s not exactly a secret anymore.

Just east of the centre, past the old aqueduct, sits Jalatlaco — a small grid of low painted houses, cobbled lanes you’re not supposed to drive fast on (and mostly can’t), a pretty church square, and murals on what feels like every other wall. It’s the most photogenic neighborhood in the city and, deservedly, it’s having a moment.

What you get staying here is calm. The lanes are quiet, the cafes are slow and good, there are little mezcal bars and a couple of seriously nice restaurants tucked in, and the whole thing is maybe a ten-to-fifteen-minute walk from the Zócalo. So you keep Centro within reach but you sleep in peace, under bougainvillea, on a street where the loudest thing is usually a dog.

The food scene here is smaller but punches above its weight — there’s been a wave of chefs opening intimate spots. And the murals genuinely repay a slow morning wander with a coffee; they change, local artists keep adding to them, and early light before the day’s photographers show up is the time to see them.

The trade-offs are small but real. You’re a walk from the markets and the main nightlife, so late at night you’ll either taxi back or commit to a quieter evening in the barrio. And because it blew up online, the nicest places book out — sort your room early, especially anywhere near Día de Muertos.

A thing worth knowing whichever side you land on: Oaxaca runs on mezcal, and the good stuff is nothing like the smoky harshness you might’ve had back home. Find a small mezcalería — there are lovely ones in both Centro and Jalatlaco — and ask them to walk you through a flight, espadín first, then a wild agave like tobalá. Sip it, don’t shoot it, alternate with the orange slices and the worm-salt, and let the person pouring tell you which village it came from. It’s cheaper and a hundred times better than anything you’ll be sold at the airport, and a couple of pours in, both neighborhoods start to feel like home.

Short trip, first time, want everything at your feet and don’t mind some noise — Centro. Longer stay, returning visitor, light sleeper, or just someone who’d rather wake up somewhere beautiful and walk into the chaos when you choose — Jalatlaco.

I’ve shifted over the years. I used to be a Centro absolutist because I’m greedy about being near the markets. Now I book Jalatlaco and walk the ten minutes, because the morning quiet and those lanes are worth more to me than the four extra minutes to a tlayuda. But you can’t lose here. They’re so close that whichever you pick, the other one is basically a stroll away.

Stay in Centro to be in the noise, Jalatlaco to escape it — and either way, buy your meat in the smoke corridor and don’t you dare skip the grasshoppers.

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