Naucalpan de Juárez is one of the largest municipalities in the State of Mexico, sprawling across the northwestern edge of Mexico City's metropolitan area with a population approaching a million. It is primarily a residential and industrial satellite city, home to corporate offices, shopping malls, and the full spectrum of Mexican urban life from wealthy gated communities to working-class neighborhoods climbing the surrounding hills.
For visitors, Naucalpan has more to offer than its reputation as a Mexico City suburb suggests. The Torres de Satélite — five brightly coloured concrete towers designed in 1957 by Luis Barragán and Mathias Goeritz — are among the most important works of Latin American modernist design, and are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The El Conde archaeological site preserves the remains of a Teotihuacan-era ceremonial platform. Los Remedios National Park provides green space and houses a colonial sanctuary built atop a pre-Columbian pyramid. For architectural curiosities, El Nido de Quetzalcóatl is a serpentine apartment complex decorated in Aztec-inspired mosaics that stands as one of Mexico's most distinctive examples of organic architecture. The Parque Naucalli is the city's main public green space, busy with local families at weekends.