Anahuacalli with your ticket

What Anahuacalli is

Anahuacalli is the museum Diego Rivera designed as a temple of the arts, in San Pablo Tepetlapa, Coyoacán. Rivera bought land on the pedregal, the rock field left by the eruption of the Xitle volcano, and began building in the early 1940s. The architects Juan O'Gorman and Heriberto Pagelson worked on it, and after Rivera's death his daughter Ruth Rivera helped finish it, with support from Dolores Olmedo. It opened in September 1964. Its name and form draw on the teocalli, the house of the gods.

The building

The museum is built of carved volcanic stone quarried from the same land it stands on. Rivera described its style as a blend of Aztec, Mayan and his own, and the design draws on Mesoamerican forms. Inside, three levels follow a symbolic order: the ground floor stands for the underworld and is dimly lit, while the upper floors stand for the earthly world and take in natural light. Rivera's studio is on the middle floor. From the roof there is a wide view over the surrounding reserve.

The collection

Rivera gathered tens of thousands of pre-Hispanic pieces, and the museum shows about 2,000 of them on permanent display, with the rest kept in a storage building. The foundation stone carries his words: I return to the people what I was able to rescue from the artistic heritage of their ancestors. A space called the Study shows sketches for Rivera's murals of the early 1930s, among them studies for Man at the Crossroads.

The lava-field reserve

Around the building, an ecological reserve of about 28,000 square metres keeps a piece of the pedregal in its wild state. The land formed roughly 2,000 years ago from the lava of the Xitle volcano, and it shelters endemic plants and animals, among them orchids and the Begonia del Pedregal, with water rising through the rock in places. The reserve offers guided walks at weekends. Even if you skip the walk, the view of it from the roof shows how the museum was meant to sit in the landscape it was carved from, dark stone on dark stone.

How the ticket link works

A Frida Kahlo Museum ticket includes a visit to the Anahuacalli Museum, and both resale entry tickets on this site and the guided tour carry it. The Casa Kahlo option does not. The museum's visitor page calls the Anahuacalli entry a courtesy visit, so read its conditions when you book and keep your Casa Azul ticket to show at the door. Anahuacalli is roughly ten minutes by car from the Casa Azul, and the two make a full day in Coyoacán.

Pairing it with the Casa Azul

A simple plan is the Casa Azul first, at your booked time, then Anahuacalli. The two museums tell one story from two sides: the Blue House shows the couple's private life and their taste for folk art and pre-Hispanic pieces, while Anahuacalli shows Rivera's ambition for that same heritage on a monumental scale. The volcanic stone of the Casa Azul's 1940s wing is the same material Rivera used here. Take a taxi or ride-hail between them, and check your route in the city's planner.

Read next: Frida Kahlo Museum tickets

Who this isn't for

Skip Anahuacalli if you have only a couple of hours in Coyoacán: the Casa Azul and the plazas fill a morning on their own. Visitors who struggle with stairs should know that the museum rises over three levels. And it is a museum of stone carvings and ancient objects, not of Kahlo, so anyone interested only in her may prefer more time in the Blue House.