Located in the craft market on the island of Cuale. The museum displays a varied collection of loan items from the regional museums of Guadalajara, Colima and Michoacán, showing the traditions of the ethnic groups inhabiting the west of Mexico: the Chupicuaro, Tarascans and other cultures prior to the Spanish conquest.

This Interpretation Gallery, dedicated to a well-known Mexican archeologist and restorer, is a great place to visit before seeing the Tula Giants. There are some exceptional pieces: a fragment of a pilaster with images of Tlaloc, the kind god and Tezcaltipoca, the fateful one; a unique jaguar in a single piece and the mysterious chacmools.

The site is home to a museum of local history displaying objects belonging to the five different periods of occupation recovered in the course of archeological explorations and presented with careful interpretation. The site was an indigenous ranch and home to the Dominican Mission of Our Lady of Guadalupe of the North, a residence for Russian families and a military barracks. The excavations uncovered foundations and the remains of a small construction beside what are believed to be the original walls.

In the former town hall of Santiago Tuxtla, the place Hernán Cortés chose to establish his marquisate, where he set up the continent’s first wine press. The museum has rich archeological displays of Olmec, Totonac and Mexica cultures, as well as revealing pieces from the viceregal period.1975

An important religious and mission complex in Baja California, it is one of eighteen established by the Mexican Province of the Company of Jesus, to teach, evangelize and protect the ethnic groups in the region from sins. This lasted until all Jesuits were expelled from the Spanish empire in 1767 on the order of Charles III. Its collection focuses on the missionaries and their pupils.

The history of the Valley of Córdoba from the fifth century BC to the viceregal period. Highlights include an important statue of Tonatiuh and an interesting musical instrument collection. It also tells the story of the slave trade and the rebellion led by Gaspar Yanga, the undefeated leader who succeeded in founding the continent’s first settlement free from slavery in 1570.

The venerable seventeenth-century former monastery of San Francisco in Pachuca houses an extremely rich collection of images from the nineteenth century onwards, featuring historical events, daily life, landscapes and visual essays. There are important collections of Tina Modotti, Nacho López, Guillermo Kahlo, and not least the collection amassed by Agustín Víctor Casasola.

The local museum in Compostela, the second capital of New Galicia, is now in an eighteenth century house. It has a valuable pre-Hispanic collection of the shaft tomb and Aztatlan cultures. Many objects tell the later story of the city and the surrounding district.