Museum sights in Oaxaca
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Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca
The beautiful monastery buildings adjoining the Iglesia de Santo Domingo house, the not-to-be-missed Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca. One of the best regional museums in Mexico, this takes you right through the history and cultures of Oaxaca state up to the present day. Explanatory material is in Spanish, but you can rent good audio guides in English for around $50. Also here is a good book and souvenir shop.
A gorgeous green-stone cloister serves as antechamber to the museum proper. The museum emphasizes the direct lineage between Oaxaca's pre-Hispanic and contemporary indigenous cultures, illustrating continuity in such areas as crafts, medicine, food, drink and music. …
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Palacio de Gobierno
On the south side of the Zócalo stands the former Palacio de Gobierno, a wonder of marble and murals that houses a lovely, modern Museo del Palacio. Its stairway mural by Arturo García Bustos depicts famous Oaxacans and Oaxaca history, including Benito Juárez and his wife, Margarita Maza, and José María Morelos, Porfirio Díaz, Vicente Guerrero (being shot at Cuilapan) and Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 17th-century nun and love poet. The exhibitions upstairs are stunningly modern and high tech, looking at Oaxacan (and indeed world) history with lots of hands-on displays for kids. It also houses the world’s largest tortilla!
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Museo Casa de Juárez
One of the few Mexican national heroes with an unsullied reputation, the great reforming president Benito Juárez (1806−72) was born a humble Zapotec villager in Guelatao, 60km northeast of Oaxaca. His parents died when he was three. At the age of 12, young Benito walked to Oaxaca and found work at the house of Antonio Salanueva, a bookbinder. Salanueva saw the boy's potential and decided to help pay for an education he otherwise might not have received.
Salanueva's simple house is now the interesting little Museo Casa de Juárez. The binding workshop is preserved, along with memorabilia of Benito.
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