Cuernavaca’s perfect climate made it the getaway of choice for the Aztec emperors, while Cortes built a palace here in 1527. Much later on, the town concealed the trysts of the Emperor Maximilian with his Indian mistress, Bonita, in the cool Casa Olinda.

In the 1950s, American jet-setters built splendid houses, their high walls shielding idyllic parks, shaded by tropical trees and dotted with brilliantly coloured flowers.

Nowadays, the City of the Eternal Spring increasingly resembles an eternal bottleneck. The beautiful houses are becoming rarer, too, as may have been parceled out and their gardens turned into parking lots for supermarkets.