Sights in Mexico
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Parque-Museo La Venta
This fascinating outdoor park-museum was created in 1958, and houses a zoo devoted to animals from Tabasco and nearby regions. You'll find cats including jaguars and ocelots as well as white-tailed deer, spider monkeys, crocodiles and more. There's an informative display on Olmec archaeology as you pass through to the sculpture trail, whose start is marked by a giant ceiba (the sacred tree of the Olmecs and Maya).
The 1km (0.6mi) walk is lined with archaeological finds from La Venta. Among the most impressive are Stele No. 3, which depicts a bearded man with a headdress; Altar No. 5, depicting a figure carrying a child; Monument 77, El Gobernante, a very sour-looking…
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El Tajín
Situated on a plain surrounded by low verdant hills, the extensive ruins of El Tajín are the most impressive reminder of Classic Veracruz civilization. The name Tajín is Totonac for 'thunder,' 'lightning' or 'hurricane,' but though the Totonacs may have occupied the site later in its history, most of the structures here were built before that civilization became powerful.
El Tajín was first occupied about AD 100, but most of what's visible dates from the era AD 600 or 700. The years AD 600 to 900 saw its zenith as a town and ceremonial center.
Around AD 1200 the site was abandoned, possibly after attacks by Chichimecs, and lay unknown to the Spaniards until about 1785,…
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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 here to gain a deeper understanding of the painter (and maybe to pick up a Frida handbag). Built by her father Guillermo three years before Frida’s birth, the house is littered with mementos and personal belongings that evoke her long, often tempestuous relationship with husband Diego Rivera and the leftist intellectual circle they often entertained here. Kitchen implements, jewelry, outfits, books and other objects from the artist’s everyday life are interspersed with art, photos and letters, as well as…
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Tlatelolco - Plaza de las Tres Culturas
The Plaza de las Tres Culturas is so named because it symbolizes the fusion of pre-Hispanic and Spanish roots into the Mexican mestizo identity. It displays the architectural legacy of those three cultural strands: the Aztec pyramids of Tlatelolco, the 17th-century Spanish Templo de Santiago and the modern Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (Foreign Ministry).
The Plaza of Three Cultures is a calm oasis in the city, but is haunted by the echoes of its sombre history. Founded by Aztecs in the 14th century, Tlatelolco was a separate dynasty from Tenochtitlán, on a separate island in Lago de Texcoco. Cortés defeated Tlatelolco's Aztec defenders here in 1521. You can view…
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Bosque de Chapultepec
Chapultepec, which means Hill of Grasshoppers in the Aztec language (Náhuatl), once served as a refuge for the wandering Aztecs before eventually becoming a summer residence for their noble class. In the 15th century, Nezahualcóyotl, ruler of nearby Texcoco, gave permission for the area to be made a forest reserve.
The Bosque de Chapultepec has remained Mexico City's largest park to this day. It now covers more than 4 sq km (1.5 sq mi) and has lakes, a zoo and several excellent museums. Still home to Mexico's high and mighty, it contains the current presidential residence (Los Pinos) and a former imperial and presidential palace (Castillo de Chapultepec).
One of its…
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El Castillo
The most famous and best restored of the region's Mayan sites, Chichén Itzá (Mouth of the Well of the Itzáes) is breathtaking. Other than a few minor passageways, El Castillo is now the only structure you can climb or enter. At the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, the morning and afternoon sun produce the illusion of a serpent along the side of the staircase.
The site is mobbed on these dates, however, making it difficult to see, and after the spectacle, parts of the site are sometimes closed to the public. The illusion is almost as good in the week preceding and following each equinox (and draws much smaller crowds), and is re-created nightly in the light-and-sound show…
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Cathedral
Guadalajara’s twin–towered cathedral is the city’s most beloved and conspicuous landmark. Begun in 1558 and consecrated in 1618, it’s almost as old as the city itself. And it’s magnificent. Time it right and you’ll see light filter through stained glass renderings of the Last Supper and hear a working pipe organ rumble sweetly from the rafters. The interior includes Gothic vaults, massive Tuscany-style gold-leaf pillars and 11 richly decorated altars that were given to Guadalajara by King Fernando VII of Spain (1814–33). Its crucifix is one of the most subtle and tasteful in Mexico (Jesus isn’t white!). The glass case nearest the north entrance is an extremely popular…
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La Ciudadela
The expansive, square complex called the Citadel is believed to have been the residence of the city's supreme ruler. Four wide walls, each 390m long and topped by 15 pyramids, enclose a huge open space, of which the main feature, to the east, is a pyramid called the Templo de Quetzalcóatl. The temple is flanked by two large complexes of rooms and patios, which may have been the city's administrative center.
The temple's most fascinating feature is the facade of an earlier structure (from around AD 250 to 300 - the temple was built sometime in the following century), which was revealed by excavating the more recent pyramid that had been built on the same site. The four…
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Playa Bagdad
The nearest beach to Matamoros is a scruffy settlement that clings to an expansive stretch of fairly clean sand 37km east of town. A large port prospered on the Mexican bank of the Río Bravo north of Matamoros, and, according to local folklore, this town was given the name 'Bagdad' by Texans who were astounded by its wealth (mostly derived from smuggling). Hurricanes destroyed the settlement in 1889, and nobody seems to remember anymore how that name traveled over here.
Playa Bagdad today consists of a small fishing settlement, a few aging cabañas and a seemingly endless row of wind-battered clapboard beach restaurants. During the June-to-September hot season and the…
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Centro Histórico
Centro Histórico (Historic Centre) brims with fine colonial buildings and historic sites. Its nerve centre and the heart of Mexico City is Zócalo, the Plaza de la Constitución, which is home to the powers-that-be.
On its east side is the Palacio Nacional, built on the site of an Aztec palace. It now holds the offices of the president, a museum and historical murals by Diego Rivera. To the north of the plaza is the Catedral Metropolitana (built by the Spanish in the 1520s on the site of the Aztecs' Tzompantli). The plaza is also a stomping ground for political protesters - it's often dotted with makeshift camps of strikers or campaigners.
Also in the vicinity is the…
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Alhóndiga de Granaditas
The site of the first major rebel victory in Mexico's War of Independence, Alhóndiga de Granaditas is now a history and art museum. Originally a massive grain-and-seed storehouse built between 1798 and 1808, the Alhóndiga became a fortress for Spanish troops and loyalist leaders in 1810. They barricaded themselves inside when 20,000 rebels led by Miguel Hidalgo attempted to take Guanajuato.
Just when it looked as though the outnumbered Spaniards would hold out, a young miner named Juan José de los Reyes Martínez (aka El Pípila), under orders from Hidalgo, tied a stone slab to his back and, protected from Spanish bullets, set the gates ablaze. The Spaniards choked on…
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Paquimé
The ruins of Paquimé, in a broad valley with panoramas to distant mountains, are what give Casas Grandes (Big Houses) its name. The mazelike eroding adobe remnants are from what became, from AD 900, the major trading settlement in northern Mexico. The settlement connected the cultures of central Mexico with the desert cultures of the north. Paquimé was the major center of the Mogollón or Casas Grandes culture, which extended north into New Mexico and Arizona and west into Sonora, as well as over most of Chihuahua state. It was finally sacked, perhaps by Apaches, around 1340. Excavation and restoration began in the late 1950s, and UNESCO declared it a World Heritage site…
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Museo Dolores Olmedo Patiño
Possibly the most important Diego Rivera collection of all belongs to the Olmedo Patiño museum, ensconced in a peaceful 17th-century hacienda 2km west of central Xochimilco.
Dolores Olmedo Patiño, who resided here until her death in 2002, was a socialite and a patron of Rivera. The museum's 144 Rivera works - including oils, watercolors and lithographs from various periods - are displayed alongside pre-Hispanic figurines and folk art. Another room is reserved for Frida Kahlo's paintings, including an especially anguished self-portrait depicting her spine as a stone column broken in several places. Outside the exhibit halls, you'll see xoloitzcuintles, a pre-Hispanic…
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Palenque Northeastern Grupos
East of the Grupo Norte, the main path crosses Arroyo Otolum. Some 70m beyond the stream, a right fork will take you to Grupo C, a set of jungle-covered buildings and plazas, thought to have been lived in from about AD 750 to 800.
If you stay on the main path, you'll descend steep steps to a group of low, elongated buildings, probably occupied residentially around AD 770 to 850. The path goes alongside the Arroyo Otolum, which here tumbles down a series of small falls forming natural bathing pools known as the Baño de la Reina (Queen's Bath). Unfortunately, one can't bathe here anymore.
The path continues to another residential quarter, the Grupo de Los Murciélagos (Bat…
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Anahuacalli
Designed by Diego Rivera to house his collection of pre-Hispanic art, this museum, 3.5km south of Coyoacán, is a fortresslike building made of dark volcanic stone. It incorporates stylistic features from many pre-Hispanic cultures. An inscription over the door reads: ‘To return to the people the artistic inheritance I was able to redeem from their ancestors.’ If the air is clear, the view over the city from the roof is great. The House of Anáhuac (Aztec name for the Valle de México) also contains one of Rivera’s studios and some of his work, including a study for Man at the Crossroads, the mural that was commissioned for the Rockefeller Center in 1934. In…
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Plaza Juárez
Representing the new face of the zone, this modern plaza is across the way from the Alameda’s Hemiciclo a Juárez, a semicircle of marble columns dedicated to postindependence president Benito Juárez, and behind the fully restored Templo de Corpus Christi, which now holds the DF’s archives. The plaza’s centerpiece is a pair of Tetris-block towers by leading Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta: the 24-story Foreign Relations Secretariat building and the 23-story Tribunales (courts) building. Fronting these monoliths is some interesting art, including a bronze aviary by Mexican sculptor Juan Soriano and, near the west entrance, a David Alfaro Siqueiros mosaic…
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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. The vast museum offers more than most people can absorb in a single visit. Concentrate on the regions you plan to visit or have visited, with a quick look at some of the other eye-catching exhibits. Everything is superbly displayed, with much explanatory text translated into English. Audio-guide devices, in English, are available at the entrance. The complex is the work of Mexican architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez. Its long, rectangular courtyard is surrounded on three sides by two-story display halls. An immense umbrellalike stone fountain rises up from…
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El Palacio
Diagonally opposite the Templo de las Inscripciones is the Palace, a large structure divided into four main courtyards, with a maze of corridors and rooms. Built and modified piecemeal over 400 years from the 5th century on, it probably really was the residence of Palenque's rulers.
Its tower, built in the 8th century by Ahkal Mo' Nahb' III and restored in 1955, has remnants of fine stucco reliefs on the walls, but you're not allowed to climb up inside it. Archaeologists believe the tower was constructed so that Maya royalty and priests could observe the sun falling directly into the Templo de las Inscripciones during the winter solsticeThe northeastern courtyard, the…
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Isla de la Piedra
Escape artists love Isla de la Piedra, located southeast of Old Mazatlán, for its beautiful, long sandy beach bordered by coconut groves. Anyone with an appetite sings the praises of the simple palapa (thatched-roof shelter) restaurants. Surfers come for the waves, and on Sunday afternoons and holidays the restaurants draw Mexican families. Most other times you'll have the beach to yourself.
Several companies offer no-hassle, all-inclusive excursions to Isla de la Piedra (it's actually a peninsula) including open bar, lunch, and a menu of activities such as water sports and short rides on forlorn, skinny horses.
It's a simple matter to get to Isla de Piedra on your own.…
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Cacaxtla & Xochitécatl
These sister sites, about 20km southwest of Tlaxcala and 32km northwest of Puebla, are among Mexico’s most intriguing. For its many high-quality, vividly painted depictions of daily life, Cacaxtla (ca-cashtla) is one of Mexico’s most impressive ancient ruins. Rather than being relegated to a museum collection, these works – including frescoes of a nearly life-size jaguar and eagle warriors engaged in battle – are on display within the site itself. Located atop a scrubby hill, with wide views of the surrounding countryside, the ruins were discovered in 1975, when men from the nearby village of San Miguel del Milagro, looking for a reputedly valuable cache of relics, dug a…
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Pirámide del Sol
The world's third-largest pyramid, surpassed in size only by Egypt's Cheops and the pyramid of Cholula, overshadows the east side of Calzada de los Muertos. The base is 222m long on each side, and it's now just over 70m high. The pyramid was cobbled together around AD 100, from three million tons of stone, without the use of metal tools, pack animals or the wheel.
The Aztec belief that the structure was dedicated to the sun god was validated in 1971, when archaeologists uncovered a 100m-long underground tunnel leading from the pyramid's west flank to a cave directly beneath its center, where they found religious artifacts. It's thought that the sun was worshiped here…
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Museo de las Momias
The famous Museum of the Mummies at the panteón (cemetery) is a quintessential example of Mexico's obsession with death. Visitors from all over come to see scores of corpses disinterred from the public cemetery. The first remains were dug up in 1865, when it was necessary to remove some bodies from the cemetery to make room for more. What the authorities uncovered were not skeletons but flesh mummified with grotesque forms and facial expressions.
The mineral content of the soil and extremely dry atmosphere had combined to preserve the bodies in this unique way.
Today, more than 100 mummies are on display in the museum, including the first mummy to be discovered, the…
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Reserva Mariposa Monarca
In the eastern-most corner of Michoacán, straddling the border of México state, lies the incredible 563-sq-km Monarch Butterfly Reserve, the site of the butterfly Burning Man. Every autumn, from late October to early November, millions of monarch butterflies flock to these forested Mexican highlands for their winter hibernation, having flown all the way from the Great Lakes region of the US and Canada, some 4500km away. As they close in on their destination they gather in gentle swarms, crossing highways and fluttering up steep mountainsides where they cling together in clusters that weigh down thick branches of the oyenal (fir) trees. When the sun rises and warms the…
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Grupo de las Pinturas
You can reach the Grupo de las Pinturas (Paintings Group) by heading 200m toward the Grupo Macanxoc and turning left. If you're on a bike, you'll have to park it here and return to it (this is the case at a few other spots as well). The temple here bears traces of glyphs and frescoes above its door and remnants of richly colored plaster inside.
You approach the temple from the southeast. Leave by the trail at the northwest (opposite the temple steps) to see two stelae. The first of these is 20m along, beneath a palapa. Here, a regal figure stands over two others, one of them kneeling with his hands bound behind him. Sacrificial captives lie beneath the feet of a ruler at…
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Parroquia de Santa Prisca
The Parroquia de Santa Prisca is the symbol of Taxco and was a labor of love for town hero José de la Borda. The local Catholic hierarchy allowed the silver magnate to donate this church to Taxco on the condition that he mortgage his mansion and other assets to guarantee its completion; the project nearly bankrupted him, but the risk was well worth it – the resulting building is one of Mexico’s most beautiful and striking pieces of baroque architecture. Perhaps Santa Prisca’s most striking feature is the contrast between its belfries with their elaborate Churrigueresque facade overlooking the Plaza Borda and the far more simple, constrained and elegant nave, when viewed…
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