Founded in the 1950s by the city’s artists, one of whom was Juan José Arreola, the museum exhibits pieces from western cultures such as the Cora, Huichol, coastal Nahua and Purepecha, with pieces from the viceregal period and a collection of sketches by the painter José Clemente Orozco.

The Augustinian order’s fifth monastery in Michoacan, was built very much like a fortress in 1550. It was a center for evangelizing the Tarascans and for training priests for this work. This great building was notable for the great masters and pupils who lived and worked here. Restored to its grandeur, it houses exhibitions on the art of printing.

Founded in 1540 by Augustinian friars, this monastery preserves extraordinary polychrome murals and examples of Romanesque, Mudéjar and Plateresque styles can be identified on its walls with many indigenous additions. The three Panels of Epazoyucan with scenes from the life of Jesus, are the highlight.

Franciscan monastery built between 1544 and 1570 in the Plateresque and Mudéjar styles with one of the few Simon Pereyns altarpieces in Mexico. It illustrates missionary work in central Mexico during the colonial period through a wide range of objects.

The San Nicolás Obispo College, built for Vasco de Quiroga and opened in 1540, displays the wonderful handcrafts of Michoacan which include: pottery, copper, stone and wooden crafts, lacquerware from Uruapan and Quiroga, Patzcuaro-style guilding, backstrap weaving, treadle loom weaving and embroidery.

Located in a former federal barracks built by Abelardo L. Rodríguez in the 1920s and restored and refurbished as a museum in 2004. The exhibition comprises pieces belonging to native peoples including the Kumiai, Pai pai and Cucapá, and explains their cultures, legends and traditions. There is also a photography collection that narrates the history of the building.

This museum—housed in a large Augustinian construction built near Teotihuacan in a Plateresque and Gothic style, dating back to 1539—has an invaluable set of very early murals and impressive cloisters. The collection includes pre-Hispanic objects, as well as religious paintings and sculptures from the viceregal period.

An important Augustinian monastery preserving valuable murals and examples of religious art from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. The ethnographic gallery shows the everyday life and crafts of the Otomi people of the valley of Mezquital.

The museum is housed in the Franciscan convent founded in 1528. The great scholar of Nahuatl, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún lived and worked here. The museum displays material on his life and work, on pre-Hispanic society from the earliest times and a collection of religious art of New Spain.

This was an important trading center both before and after the Conquest. With the construction of the Dominican convent (finished in 1575) it maintained this character as well as being an important center for evangelization. A notable collection of both religious and civic objects from the colonial period.