I recommend Martin’s method, but I also want to add the option of X-ray mode. You can toggle this with alt+z. In solid shade view it makes the mesh see thru. In wireframe shade view it shows/hides vertices/edges that are behind the faces. When you switch to wireframe X-ray is automatically turned on(I believe. Then again Blender may remember the last state X-ray was in). If you don’t like hotkeys the X-ray toggle icon is to the left of the wireframe shade view icon on the header.
You can also add this option to the z pie menu thru preferences->keymap->check extra shading options.
