Occupying 44,000 square feet, Mexico City's anthropology museum is regarded as one of the top museums in the world. The museum offers the single best introduction to the culture of Mexico. First-floor rooms are devoted to the pre-Hispanic cultures of Mexico. Second-floor rooms cover contemporary rural cultures through their crafts and everyday life. Inside the museum is an open courtyard (containing the Chávez Morado fountain) with beautifully designed and spacious rooms running around three sides on two levels. The ground-floor rooms are devoted to history--from prehistoric days up to the most recently explored archaeological sites--and are the most popular among studious visitors. These rooms include dioramas of Mexico City when the Spaniards first arrived and reproductions of part of a pyramid at Teotihuacán. The Aztec calendar stone "wheel" takes a proud place here.
Save some of your time and energy, though, for the livelier and more readily comprehensible ethnographic rooms upstairs. This section is devoted to the way people throughout Mexico live today, complete with straw-covered huts, tape recordings of songs and dances, crafts, clothing, and lifelike models of village activities. This floor, a living museum, strikes me as vital to the understanding of contemporary Mexico because so much of Mexican village life remains swathed in pre-Hispanic customs.
There is a lovely restaurant in the museum with moderate prices, air-conditioning, and cheerful patio tables.
Note: Most of the museum is wheelchair accessible; however, assistance will be needed in places. Signs are in Spanish only.
Chapultepec Park
Phone: 5/553-6381 .
Open: Tues-Sat 9am-7pm; Sun 10am-6pm.
Admission $2.25; free Sun. There is a $1.50 fee for still cameras, $3.50 for amateur video cameras; no tripods permitted.
Metro: Auditorio.
Museo Nacional de Antropología