The 1985 Mexico City earthquake caused widespread destruction in the colonia, especially to newer and more commercial and apartment buildings, even causing one major development to mostly disappear. Older mansions began to give way to modern commercial buildings in the 1960s and 1970s as the deterioration became more serious. However, wealthy residents began to move to newer neighborhoods as early as the 1940s and problems associated with urbanization began to appear in the 1950s. The colonia's height as an “aristocratic” and “European” enclave was from its founding in the 1900s until about the 1940s. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this area west of what was Mexico City proper was being turned into “modern” colonias for the wealthy seeking to escape the deterioration of city center. During the colonial period, the area dried up and became rural lands first owned by Hernán Cortés and then by the Counts of Miraville. The area was a very shallow part of Lake Texcoco, dotted with tiny islands and one small island village of Aztacalco during the pre-Hispanic period. In the distance on the left can be seen the Castillo de Chapultepec. Paisaje de San Cristóbal Romita, Luis Coto, 1857. Roma was designated as a "Barrio Mágico" ("magical neighborhood") by the city in 2011. Many are housed in former Art Nouveau and Neo-Classical buildings dating from the Porfiriato period at the beginning of the 20th century. Besides residential buildings, the neighborhood streets are lined with restaurants, bars, clubs, shops, cultural centers, churches and galleries. Ĭurrently Roma and neighbouring Condesa are known for being the epicenter of hipster subculture in the city, and rivals Polanco as the center of the city's culinary scene. Since the 2000s, the area has seen increasing gentrification. By the 1940s, it had become a middle-class neighborhood in slow decline, with the downswing being worsened by the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. The colonia was planned as an upper-class Porfirian neighborhood in the early twentieth century. Buildings along Colima Street in Colonia RomaĬolonia Roma, also called La Roma or simply, Roma, is a district located in the Cuauhtémoc borough of Mexico City just west of the city's historic center, and in fact is no longer a single colonia (neighbourhood) but now two officially defined ones, Roma Norte and Roma Sur, divided by Coahuila street.
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