Unspecified/General

Widely regarded as one of the greatest museums of its kind in the world, the National Museum of Anthropology in the Chapultepec park of Mexico City holds the most important collection of ancient Mexican art and artefacts anywhere, telling the story of the many civilisations that flourished in the region before the Spanish conquest. Opened in 1964 in a celebrated building by the architect Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, the museum is itself a masterpiece, its galleries arranged around a vast courtyard partly covered by a huge concrete canopy supported on a single carved central pillar, from which water cascades like an eternal fountain. The ground floor is devoted to archaeology, with halls dedicated in turn to the great cultures of ancient Mexico, the Maya, the Aztecs or Mexica, the people of Teotihuacan, the Olmecs, the Zapotecs and others, while the upper floor presents the living indigenous cultures of the country today. Among its most famous treasures are the great Aztec Sun Stone, often called the Aztec calendar, a colossal carved disc that is among the most recognisable objects of ancient Mexico, the giant stone heads of the Olmecs, and a reconstruction of the tomb of the Maya ruler Pakal from Palenque. The richness and scale of the collection make a visit essential to understanding the country. The building itself, completed in 1964 under the direction of Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, is celebrated as a masterwork of modern Mexican architecture, conceived to display the nation's ancient heritage with the dignity of a great temple, and its vast central courtyard, partly sheltered by an immense rectangular canopy poised on a single sculpted column down which water falls in a continuous curtain, is one of the most admired architectural spaces in the country. The arrangement of the galleries guides visitors logically through the archaeology of ancient Mexico, each great hall devoted to a culture or region, so that one moves from the colossal heads and jade of the Olmecs, often called the mother culture, through the murals and masks of Teotihuacan, the stelae and reliefs of the Maya, the treasures of the Zapotecs and Mixtecs, and the imposing monuments of the Aztecs, while the upper floor turns to the costumes, crafts and customs of the indigenous peoples who continue these traditions today. The Sun Stone, a massive carved basalt disc dense with calendrical and cosmological symbolism, is perhaps the single most famous object in the country, and the reconstructed jade-masked tomb of the Maya king Pakal and the great Aztec sculptures draw constant crowds. So comprehensive is the collection that the museum is widely held to be essential to grasping the depth of Mexico's past.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Avenida Paseo de la Reforma y Calzada Gandhi, Mexico City, Mexico

Website: https://www.mna.inah.gob.mx

Opening Date: 17/09/1964