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The cobalt-blue walls of the Casa Azul, the house in the Coyoacan district of Mexico City where the artist Frida Kahlo was born, lived and died, give the Museo Frida Kahlo its popular name and make it one of the most visited and beloved museums in the country. Kahlo spent much of her life in this house, sharing it for many years with her husband, the muralist Diego Rivera, and it was here that she painted many of her works, recovered from the illnesses and the catastrophic accident that marked her life, and entertained a circle of artists, intellectuals and political figures, among them the exiled Leon Trotsky. After her death in 1954 Rivera arranged for the house to be preserved and opened it as a museum a few years later, leaving much of it as it had been in her lifetime. Visitors can walk through the rooms where she lived and worked, seeing her studio with its easel and wheelchair, her bedroom, the kitchen decorated in folk style, and the lush garden, along with displays of her clothing, the traditional Tehuana dresses she favoured, personal belongings, photographs and a selection of her paintings and those of artists she admired. The house offers an intimate encounter with one of the most iconic figures in modern art. The house has a history that long predates its fame, having been the family home where Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 and where she spent her childhood, and over the years it was extended and remodelled, most strikingly when its walls were painted the deep blue that gave it its name, a colour Kahlo associated with her Mexican identity. The rooms preserve the atmosphere of the household she shared with Diego Rivera, filled with the folk art, pre-Hispanic figures, retablos and everyday objects the couple loved, and the museum lays particular stress on the connection between the spaces and the woman who lived in them: the bed fitted with a mirror above it, where the bedridden artist painted many of her self-portraits, the wheelchair drawn up to her easel, the kitchen bright with painted pottery, and the studio flooded with light. Displays of her distinctive Tehuana dresses, her jewellery, the corsets and braces she wore after her injuries, photographs and letters deepen the intimate portrait, and a selection of her paintings and works by artists she admired hangs throughout. The lush garden, with its pyramid-shaped plinth displaying ancient figures, completes the visit. Among the most popular museums in the country, often requiring advance booking to manage the crowds, the Casa Azul offers an unusually personal encounter with the life and world of a global cultural icon.