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For more than eighty years the official residence of the presidents of Mexico, the compound known as Los Pinos was opened to the public as a cultural centre in December 2018, when a newly elected president declined to live there and handed the grounds over to the people as a gesture against the trappings of power. Set within the great Chapultepec park in Mexico City, the complex takes its name, meaning the pines, from a country estate that once stood on the site, and over the decades successive presidents added houses, offices and gardens, so that the grounds became a sprawling enclave largely hidden from ordinary citizens. Since opening, the Complejo Cultural Los Pinos has welcomed visitors free of charge to wander the gardens and enter the former presidential houses, where the rooms, furnishings and decoration offer a glimpse into how the country's leaders lived, alongside murals and works of art. The centre now hosts exhibitions, concerts, workshops and cultural events, and for many Mexicans a visit carries a powerful symbolic weight, allowing them to walk freely through a place that for generations was the exclusive preserve of the powerful. The opening of Los Pinos to the public was a deliberately symbolic act, framed as the return of a privileged space to the citizens, and from the first days large crowds came to walk through gates that had been closed to them for generations and to see for themselves the rooms where presidents had lived and governed. The grounds had grown over the decades from a modest former hacienda house into a substantial compound of residences, offices, gardens and service buildings, screened by trees within the larger Chapultepec park, and visitors can now stroll the lawns and enter the principal houses, where preserved furnishings, decoration and works of art convey the changing tastes and lifestyles of the country's leaders across the twentieth century. The complex has been given over to culture, hosting temporary exhibitions, concerts, film screenings, workshops and other events, and admission is free, in keeping with its role as a public cultural centre rather than a museum of state. For Mexicans the place carries a charge of meaning that goes beyond the buildings themselves, embodying a shift in the relationship between the powerful and the people, while for visitors from abroad it offers both an attractive green space within the vast park and an unusual window onto the recent political history of the nation, set amid the museums, lakes and woods of Chapultepec.