We have been to Mexico City three times, and each visit leaves us wondering why we waited so long to return.

Mexico City is enormous, energetic and endlessly surprising—a place where grand boulevards, leafy neighborhoods, ancient ruins and bold contemporary architecture somehow exist side by side. It can feel overwhelming at first, but it quickly becomes one of those cities that invites you to settle in and become part of its rhythm.

The food alone is reason enough to visit. You can begin the morning with chilaquiles at a neighborhood café, grab tacos from a sidewalk stand for lunch and finish the day at one of the most inventive restaurants in the world. Yet some of our best meals have been the simplest: fresh tortillas, perfectly seasoned meat, a squeeze of lime and a cold cerveza. Mexico City takes food seriously, but it rarely makes dining feel overly serious.

The city’s art scene is equally exceptional. There are the celebrated museums—the Museo Frida Kahlo, Museo Soumaya, Museo Jumex and the monumental Museo Nacional de Antropología—but the smaller galleries are just as exciting. Neighborhoods such as Roma Norte, Condesa, Polanco and San Miguel Chapultepec are filled with contemporary galleries, independent art spaces, design shops and studios. The work is international in scope but unmistakably Mexican in spirit.

Getting around is easier than one might expect in a city of more than 20 million people. Uber is affordable and convenient, the Metro reaches much of the city, and neighborhoods such as Roma and Condesa are best explored on foot. Traffic can be formidable, so it is wise to organize each day by neighborhood rather than spend hours crossing back and forth across the city.

Mexico City is also a natural hub for exploring more of Mexico. From here, you can travel north to the colonial beauty of San Miguel de Allende, south to Oaxaca for extraordinary food, crafts and architecture, or fly east to the Yucatán and continue to the beaches of Holbox. Each offers a completely different experience, yet all are easily connected through the capital.

But Mexico City is much more than a convenient stopping point. It is the destination—the kind of city that reveals itself gradually through its food, art, architecture, parks and people. Three visits have not been enough. If anything, they have only given us more reasons to return.