Biblioteca Vasconselos

In the Buenavista neighborhood resides this impressive library that spans 409,000 sq ft, designed by Mexican architects Alberto Kalach and Juan Palomar. Adored by those that appreciate architecture, and those looking for Instagram fodder, the space feels like you’re in the Tesseract in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. Whilst some might opt not to, we walked from Condesa to the library (an hour or so) and is a great way to experience other parts of Mexico City and getting even deeper into the local scene.

Photographing the library

Smartphones and pocket cameras will easily be allowed into the library. However, if you’re like me and enter with a big camera with a detachable lens, expect to be stopped by security (in a very polite and kind manner). I had heard about this from reviews, and so I was prepared. Since we couldn’t converse much — my basic food-ordering-getting-around-thanks-hello-bye-thanks vocabulary expended, and the security fella’s English in short supply — he just took me to another part of the library into the administrative area.

It’s neat: you get to see how the offices look and match up against the rest of the stunning architecture, and you descend these steps around panes of glass and I came to a woman who clearly knew the drill. What I had gleaned from reviews was that I was to sign a waiver saying that I would not sell any of my images from the Biblioteca for profit. I read the sheet, signed, and was assigned a cool lanyard indicating that I was “Press.” Legit! I felt a little special after that, as I didn’t feel like I needed to be sneaky about taking photos. At the end, I turned in my pass and left.