National Museum of Anthropology

Pedro Ramírez Vázquez's museum opened on 17 September 1964, covering nearly eight hectares. It is built as a rectangle of galleries around one enormous courtyard, and the courtyard is dominated by el paraguas — a vast square concrete canopy held up by a single carved pillar, with water falling from it in a continuous ring. Every route through the museum crosses under it, which is deliberate: the halls open off the courtyard rather than off each other, so you can enter and leave any of them without walking the whole building.

That layout is the practical fact to hold on to. Twenty-three halls in sequence is a route march; twenty-three halls you can dip into from a central courtyard is a museum you can do in three hours without cheating. The ground floor holds the archaeology, arranged by culture and roughly by chronology as you go clockwise; the upper floor holds ethnography — the living cultures of the same regions, directly above their ancestors' rooms.

1. Teotihuacán hall. A full-scale reconstruction of part of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent facade, with its colour restored — the best possible preparation for, or debrief from, the site itself.

2. Toltec hall. The Atlantean warriors from Tula, four metres tall, and the reclining chacmool figures that turn up again everywhere in Mesoamerica.

3. Mexica hall. The big one, straight ahead from the entrance: the Sun Stone on the end wall, the Coatlicue figure, the model of Tenochtitlan's ceremonial precinct that shows exactly what the Spanish built the Zócalo on top of. Give this room a third of your time.

4. Oaxaca hall. Zapotec and Mixtec, with the jade and gold from Monte Albán's Tomb 7 — the finest metalwork in the building.

5. Gulf Coast hall. The colossal Olmec heads, carved from basalt hauled tens of kilometres, and the reason the Olmec are called the mother culture of the region.

6. Maya hall. The largest of them, with the reconstructed tomb of Pakal from Palenque in the basement below it — the jade mask, the sarcophagus lid, the stairway down. Most people find this and the Mexica hall the two they cannot rush.

7. The Maya courtyard. Outside the hall, a reconstructed temple facade and stelae in daylight; the museum's quietest ten minutes.

8. The upper floor, briefly. If you have twenty minutes left, go directly above the Maya hall: the ethnography rooms show textiles, houses and ceremonies of communities living now, and they change how the ground floor reads. Do not attempt the whole floor on a first visit.

The Sun Stone — the carved basalt disc, 3.6 metres across, that everyone calls the Aztec calendar — is on the end wall of the Mexica hall here. It is not at Teotihuacán, which predates the Mexica by a thousand years, and it is not at the Templo Mayor, where it was found in 1790 beside the cathedral. Whether it is a calendar at all is disputed; what is agreed is that it was a ceremonial monument, unfinished or abandoned, and that its imagery is about the cycles of creation rather than about dates.

Pakal's tomb from Palenque is reconstructed in the basement of the Maya hall: the jade mosaic mask, the sarcophagus lid whose carving launched a whole genre of nonsense about astronauts, and the stone stairway that led down to it. It is easy to walk past the entrance to the stairs; look for it at the far end of the hall.

The Olmec colossal heads are in the Gulf Coast hall, not in Villahermosa where several others stand outdoors. And the Teotihuacán facade — the Feathered Serpent temple with its colour restored — is the one thing at the site that cannot be seen at the site, because the surviving pigment is here. That is the argument for coming to this museum before the pyramids rather than after.

Three hours is the honest minimum for the ground floor at a pace that lets you stand still in the Mexica and Maya halls. Ninety minutes gets you four rooms and a sense of having been rushed. A full day, with the upper floor and the cafeteria, is what the building is designed for and what almost nobody has time to give it.

Two things that cost time and are worth budgeting: the bag check at the entrance, which is quick but real, and the distance from the metro. The museum is inside the park, a few hundred metres from the gate, and the walk from Auditorio station takes about ten minutes.

Since 1 January 2026 INAH has charged two prices — MX$210 for non-resident foreign visitors, MX$105 for Mexican nationals and foreign residents with proof — and the Sunday exemption belongs to the second group only. A visiting foreigner pays MX$210 on a Sunday exactly as on a Tuesday, and shares the halls with the largest domestic crowd of the week. English-language guides that promise a free Sunday at the Anthropology Museum are describing somebody else's entitlement.

What is genuinely free, any day and any nationality: children under 13, visitors with disabilities, and students and teachers with a current credential. Bring the credential if you have one — this is the one exemption a foreign visitor can actually use, and the window does check it. The same rule holds at Chapultepec Castle, Teotihuacán and the Templo Mayor.

Metro Auditorio on Line 7 is the nearest station, about ten minutes on foot through the park; Chapultepec on Line 1 puts you at the other end, by the castle, a 25-minute walk away. The Metrobús runs along Reforma and stops outside. Metro fares are MX$5 a trip on the operator's published tariff. An app car from the Centro Histórico takes 25 to 45 minutes depending on the hour; getting around has the full picture.

Large bags and backpacks go through a check at the entrance and may have to be left. Photography without flash is fine throughout; tripods are not. The cafeteria sits off the courtyard and is better than it needs to be, which matters when the alternative is leaving the park.

Chapultepec Castle closes at 17:00; this museum closes at 18:00. So the castle goes first, at 09:00, while the climb is cool and the terrace is empty, and the museum takes the afternoon. Both charge MX$210 for a foreign visitor, so the day costs MX$420 in entries, or you can take the guided pairing at $75.65, which covers both entries and a licensed guide.

Two kilometres of park path separate them, or the park's electric train covers part of the distance for MX$40. Both close on Monday, which is why the Monday page exists and why Teotihuacán belongs on that day.

Castle at 09:00, walk the park, lunch in Polanco or at the museum's own cafeteria, and the halls from about 13:00 until closing at 18:00 — that is the whole of day two in the two-day itinerary and it works because nothing after a museum of this size is going to land anyway.

If you can only fit one big museum into a short trip, make it this one and see it before Teotihuacán rather than after: the Teotihuacán hall here explains what you will be standing on, and the site itself has no equivalent display.

The rest of the trip around it — what else a four-day visit holds, and in what order — is on the Mexico City city guide.