Mainly a commercial and tourist center, this suburb of Mexico City is famous for its canals lined with poplars and flowers (Xochimilco is a Native American word meaning "plantation of flowers").

In pre-Hispanic times the Xochimilcas built soil-covered rafts (chinampas) in Lake Xochimilco on which they grew vegetables and flowers to be shipped to Mexico City on the canals. Eventually the rafts became islands rooted to the lake bottom. Boating on the canals is popular among tourists and city residents. Colonial landmarks in the area include a 16th-century church.

During the time of the Aztecs, the entire basin of Mexico City consisted of a system of lakes and chinampas, or floating islands, constructed of reeds and branches and topped with soil. The chinampas of Xochimilco had been used for centuries to cultivate corn, pumpkins, tomatoes and other crops to supply the entire area. And although the Spanish conquerors razed a number of Aztec structures to fill in the lake in the center of the city, Xochimilco's system of chinampas were relatively undisturbed until water shortages and the sprawl of civilization marked the beginning of its decline at the end of the 19th century.