Mexico Guide
Mexico City
Museo Nacional de Antropología
Opening time: Tues– Sun 9am–7pm
Price: M$45 Tues– Sat, free on Sun, M$30 to bring in a video camera
Website: www.mna.inah.gob.mx
Bosque de Chapultepec's outstanding attraction – for many people the main justification for visiting the city at all – is the Museo Nacional de Antropología, one of the world's great museums, not only for its collection, which is vast, rich and diverse, but also for the originality and practicality of its design. If you're rushed, the whole thing can be taken in on one visit, but it is far more satisfactory to spread your visit over two days.
The entrance from Reforma is marked by a colossal statue of the rain god Tlaloc – the story goes that its move here from its original home in the east of the city was accompanied by furious downpours in the midst of a drought.
The Pre-Classic room covers the development of the first cultures in the Valley of México and surrounding highlands – pottery and clay figurines from these early agricultural communities predominate.
The next hall is devoted to Teotihuacán, the first great city in the Valley of México. A growing sophistication is immediately apparent in the more elaborate nature of the pottery vessels and the use of new materials, shells, stone and jewels.
The Toltec room actually begins with objects from Xochicalco, a city near modern Cuernavaca, which flourished between the fall of Teotihuacán and the heyday of Tula.
Also here are reproductions of seventh-century frescoes of a birdman and jaguar from Cacaxtla, found by a campesino tending his fields in 1975, and an extensive collection of rings, which served as goals in the ancient ball-game.
Next comes the biggest and richest room of all, the Mexica Gallery, characterized by massive yet intricate stone sculpture, but also displaying pottery, small stone objects, even wooden musical instruments.
The undoubted highlight here, though, is the enormous 24-tonne Piedra del Sol, the Stone of the Sun or Aztec Calendar Stone.
The hall devoted to the Maya is perhaps the most varied of all, reflecting the longest-lived and widest-spread of the Mesoamerican cultures. In some ways it's a disappointment, since their greatest achievements were in architecture and in the decoration of their temples – many of which, unlike those of the Aztecs, are still standing – so that the objects here seem relatively unimpressive.