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Museo Frida Kahlo
Iconic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was born, lived and died in the 'Blue House,' six blocks north of Plaza Hidalgo. Almost every visitor to Mexico City makes a pilgrimage there to gain a deeper understanding of the painter (and maybe to pick up a Frida handbag).
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Museo Interactivo De Economía
Housed in the former hospital of the Bethlehemites (the only religious order to be established in the Americas), this sprawling 18th-century structure has since 2006 been the unlikely home of a museum devoted to economics. A slew of hands-on exhibits are aimed at breaking down economic concepts and demonstrating how every Mexican affects and is affected by these principles. Visitors can start a corporation, chart their investments or design their own currency.
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Museo José Luis Cuevas
A haven for Mexico's fringe art scene, the museum showcases the works of Cuevas, a leader of the 1950s Ruptura movement which broke with the politicized art of the post-revolutionary regime. Cuevas' La Giganta, an 8m-high bronze figure with male and female features, dominates the central patio, while the Sala de Arte Erótico is an intriguing gallery of the artist's sexual themes.
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Museo Léon Trotsky
Having come second to Stalin in the power struggle in the Soviet Union, Trotsky was expelled in 1929 and condemned to death in absentia. In 1937 he found refuge in Mexico. At first Trotsky and his wife, Natalia, lived in Frida Kahlo's Blue House, but after falling out with Kahlo and Rivera they moved a few streets northeast, to Viena 45.
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Museo Mural Diego Rivera
Among Diego Rivera's most famous works is Sueño de una Tarde Dominical en la Alameda (Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda), painted in 1947. In the 15m-long by 4m-high mural, the artist imagined many of the figures who walked in the city from colonial times onward, among them Cortés, Juárez, Emperor Maximilian, Porfirio Díaz, and Francisco Madero and his nemesis, General Victoriano Huerta.
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Museo Nacional De Antropología
The National Museum of Anthropology, among the finest of its kind, stands in an extension of the Bosque de Chapultepec.
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Museo Nacional de Arte
Built around 1900 in the style of an Italian Renaissance palace, the National Art Museum holds collections representing every school of Mexican art up to the early 20th century. A highlight is the work of José María Velasco, depicting the Valley of Mexico in the late 19th century - with Guadalupe and Chapultepec far outside the city.
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Museo Nacional De Culturas Populares
Half a block east of Plaza Hidalgo is the National Museum of Popular Culture, which has good temporary exhibitions on popular culture, indigenous crafts and celebrations in its various courtyards and galleries. Past exhibits have covered lucha libre, (nativity models) and circuses.
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Museo Nacional De La Estampa
Adjacent to the Iglesia de Santa Veracruz is the National Print Museum. Devoted to the graphic arts, it stages compelling thematic exhibits from the National Fine Arts Institute's collection of over 10,000 prints, lithographs and engravings, as well as the tools of these techniques.
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Museo Nacional De La Revolución
Underlying the monument, the National Museum of the Revolution covers an 80-year period, from the implementation of the constitution guaranteeing human rights in 1857 to the installation of the postrevolutionary government in 1920. Despite the compelling subject matter, explanatory text remains untranslated. Enter from the northeast quarter of the plaza.
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Museo Nacional De Las Culturas
Constructed in 1567 as the colonial mint, the museum features ethnographic displays on the dress and handicrafts of the world's cultures. At least as interesting is the Rufino Tamayo mural in the entryway, entitled La Revolución . An atypically realistic canvas for the artist, it depicts the downfall of the Porfirio Diáz regime.
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Museo Nacional De San Carlos
The museum exhibits a formidable collection of European art from the 16th century to the early 20th century, including works by Rubens, Van Dyck and Goya. Occupying the former mansion of the Conde de Buenavista, the unusual rotunda structure was designed by Manuel Tolsá in the late 18th century. It later became home to Alamo victor Santa Anna, and subsequently served as a cigar factory, a lottery headquarters and a school before being reborn as a museum in 1968.
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Museo Rufino Tamayo
A multilevel concrete and glass structure east of the Museo Nacional de Antropología, the Tamayo Museum was built to house international modern art donated by Oaxaca-born Rufino Tamayo and his wife, Olga, to the people of Mexico. Exhibitions of cutting-edge modern art from around the globe alternate with thematically arranged shows from the Tamayo collection.
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Museo Sala De Arte Público David Alfaro Siqueiros
One of the Big Three of Mexican muralism along with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros is recalled as much for his fiercely radical political views as for his larger-than-life paintings. An avowed anarchist, he notoriously organized an (unsuccessful) assassination attempt on the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.
Read more about Museo Sala De Arte Público David Alfaro Siqueiros
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Museo Soumaya
Property of multibillionaire businessman Carlos Slim and named after his late wife, the Soumaya museum houses one of the world's three major collections - 70 pieces - of the sculpture of Frenchman Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). Located inside the Plaza Loreto shopping mall, it also possesses work by Rodin's contemporaries Degas, Matisse, Renoir and Daumier, collections of Mexican portraiture and colonial art, and murals by Rufino Tamayo, besides staging major temporary exhibitions.
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Museo Universitario De Ciencias Y Artes
Hosts eclectic, often polemical, exhibitions from the university collection.
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Omr
Housed in a grand Art Nouveau gem of a building with soaring ceilings, OMR adds its own slant to contemporary with a floor that tilts to one side, the result of settling soil (Roma is built on a dry lake bed). The gallery holds six to eight exhibitions per year and represents a broad spectrum of the most prominent painters, sculptors and photographers on both the Mexican and international art scene, like Mauricio Alejo, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, José Leon Cerrillo and Spanish artist Félix Curto.
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Palacio De Bellas Artes
The splendid white-marble Palace of Fine Arts, a concert hall and arts center commissioned by President Porfirio Díaz. Construction began in 1905 under Italian architect Adamo Boari, who favored neoclassical and art nouveau styles. The project became more complicated than anticipated as the heavy marble shell sank into the spongy subsoil, and then the Revolution intervened. Work was halted and Boari returned to Italy. Architect Federico Mariscal eventually finished the interior in the 1930s, using the more modern art deco style.
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Palacio De Iturbide
West of Bolívar, you'll encounter the baroque facade of the late-18th-century Palacio de Iturbide. Built for colonial nobility, in 1821 it became the residence of General Agustín Iturbide, a hero of the Mexican struggle for independence. To the cheers of a rent-a-crowd, Iturbide was proclaimed Emperor Agustín I here in 1822. (He abdicated less than a year later, after General Santa Anna announced the birth of the republic.)
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Palacio De Minería
Opposite the national art museum is the Palace of Mining, where mining engineers were trained in the 19th century. Today it houses a branch of the national university's engineering department. A neoclassical masterpiece, the palace was designed by Tolsá and built between 1797 and 1813. Visits are by guided tour only. There's a small museum (admission around $10 ; h - Wed-Sun) on the illustrious architect's life and work.
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Palacio Nacional
The National Palace is home to the offices of the president of Mexico, the Federal Treasury and dramatic murals by Diego Rivera. Above the central entrance hangs the 'Campana de Dolores', the bell rung in the town of Dolores Hidalgo by Padre Miguel Hidalgo in 1810 at the start of the Mexican War of Independence. The first palace on this spot was built by Aztec emperor Moctezuma II in the early 16th century, but Cortés destroyed it in 1521.
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Palacio Postal
More than just Mexico City's central post office, this early-20th-century palace is an architectural stunner. Across Eje Central from the Palacio de Bellas Artes, it was designed in Italian renaissance style by that structure's original architect, Adamo Boari. The beige stone facade features baroque columns and carved filigree around the windows; inside, the bronze railings on the monumental staircase were cast in Florence.
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Panteón Civil de Dolores
Chapultepec's second and third sections are divided by a huge cemetery, the Panteón Civil de Dolores. Near its main entrance on Av Constituyentes, the Rotonda de las Personas Ilustres (Rotunda of Illustrious Persons) contains the mortal remains of numerous celebrated Mexicans including the artists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and Dr Atl (Gerardo Murillo).
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Papalote Museo Del Niño
At this innovative, hands-on museum, kids can put together a radio program, lie on a bed of nails, join an archaeological dig and try out all manner of technological gadget games. Everything is attended by child-friendly supervisors. The museum also features a 3D IMAX movie theater.
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Parque Ecológico de Xochimilco
Despite Xochimilco's Unesco World Heritage status, encroaching urbanization and illegal settlement along the canals continue to strain this unique habitat. At least one endemic species of the zone, the axolotl (a fishlike salamander) is in danger of extinction. Thus in 1991 the Ecological Park of Xochimilco was established, about 3km northeast of downtown Xochimilco, both to recover the fragile ecosystem and to provide a retreat for stressed-out urbanites.
