Museum of Mexico City

The Museum of Mexico City (Museo de la Ciudad de México) occupies a colonial palace on what was once the Iztapalapa Causeway, close to where Hernán Cortés and Moctezuma II first met. The building was the home of the Counts of Santiago de Calimaya, descendants of one of the conquistadors who came with Cortés. It was extensively remodeled during the colonial period and completed in 1779 by the architect Francisco Antonio de Guerrero y Torres. It still looks much as it did then.

The family lived here until 1960, when the city government acquired the house to establish the museum, founded in 1961. Elements of the old palace remain alongside 26 rooms tracing the history and development of Mexico City from Aztec times to the present.

The building also holds a library and the studios of the painter Joaquín Clausell, who lived here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Set a few blocks south of the Zócalo, it suits visitors drawn to the city's long history as much as to its colonial architecture.