The National Museum of Anthropology, a must-see destination for anyone visiting Mexico City

It's one of the world's finest museums , showcasing an essential archaeological, ethnographic, and ancient collection of pre-Hispanic civilizations in 22 permanent galleries. The National Museum of Anthropology , inaugurated on September 17, 1964, is a must-see for anyone visiting Mexico City. You can wander through its vast halls once or twenty times: you'll never tire.

There are impressive relics that can be seen from dozens of meters away, and small, beautifully subtle figurines that can only be appreciated if you stop and look at one of the hundreds of display cases throughout the museum. It is visited by more than two million people each year and this year it was awarded the Princess of Asturias Award for Concord .

Since the end of the 18th century and especially since Mexico's independence in 1821, various pre-Hispanic collections were housed in different locations throughout the Mexican capital until construction began on the current headquarters in 1963. After 19 months, President Adolfo López Mateos inaugurated the museum with a few momentous words:

"The Mexican people erect this monument in honor of the admirable cultures that flourished during the pre-Columbian era in regions that are now part of the Mexican Republic. Faced with the testimonies of those cultures, today's Mexico pays homage to indigenous Mexico, in whose example it recognizes characteristics of its national identity."

In the museum's archaeological rooms, some fabulous pieces stand out, such as the Sun Stone , also known as the Aztec calendar, which measures 3.6 meters in diameter, weighs more than 24 tons and was found in 1479, the colossal heads of the very ancient Olmec culture, the Teotihuacan sculptures in homage to the gods of water, the recreation of the Mayan tomb of Pakal discovered in 1952 by the archaeologist Alberto Ruz in the Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque, southern Mexico, with its rich reliquary, the funerary offerings of Monte Albán, the stelae of Xochicalco, the gigantic seven-meter monolithic of Tlaloc, the Mexica god of rain , lightning and fertility, which guards the entrance to the museum and a Toltec Atlantean, a giant warrior, symbol of the majesty of this culture.

The first rooms display models depicting the lifestyle of the first human groups to inhabit the Americas after their migrations across the Bering Strait. One of the museum's most beautiful and oldest pieces is the Acrobat, an anthropomorphic vessel depicting a contortionist resting on his elbows. It belongs to the Tlatilco culture, which has existed for over 3,000 years.

Teotihuacán is one of the largest archaeological sites in the world. Its construction, over two millennia ago, took more than 650 years. The pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, the god associated with creation, wisdom, and fertility, and the Avenue of the Dead were its main ceremonial buildings in a city inhabited by 25,000 people . Its economic power lay in the production of ceramics and the exploitation of obsidian, basalt, and andesite deposits. The museum displays religious objects made of jade (the green stone) that represent concepts such as fertility, water, and life.

After the fall of the Teotihuacan empire, the Toltecs flourished in Tula , their capital. Their muralists created masterpieces in Cacaxtla, one of their main cities. Their warriors used the tzompantli as a structure where they displayed rows of human skulls to appease the wrath of the gods. This practice was also used by other Mesoamerican peoples, such as the Maya and the Mexica.

The Mexica ruled a large portion of present-day Mexico for more than 250 years until the arrival of the Spanish. They forced the conquered peoples to pay tribute and focused on controlling the most important trade routes and markets. In the museum's dedicated room, you can see large sculptures such as Coatlicue, considered the mother of all gods, who represents "the duality inherent in life, embodying creation and destruction, feminine and masculine, light and darkness." There is also a Cuauhxicalli in the form of a feline, used in sacrificial ceremonies to contain the hearts of victims.

In the southern state of Oaxaca, ethnic groups such as the Zapotecs, whose impressive capital was Monte Albán, located on a hilltop, and the Mixtecs stood out.

The Zapotecs were excellent weavers, potters, and architects, and they focused on developing a form of writing that can be seen on their ceramics for making mortuary offerings. The Mixtecs, for their part, displayed their history and worldview in various pictographic writing codices. They were great artisans, and their creativity can be seen in obsidian and rock crystal figures and tools, polychrome ceramics, and bone and wood carvings.

One of the most imposing cultures of ancient Mesoamerica is the Maya. The territory they dominated encompassed large areas of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. They were a civilization linked to astronomy with extensive knowledge of mathematics. They created a complex writing system and a cyclical calendar to remember essential dates in their history, but also to know when to plant crops or perform their religious ceremonies. In their cities, they built observatories to study the sun, which was worshipped as a god, the stars, and the planets. Rulers were buried in monolithic sarcophagi covered with enormous slabs depicting scenes related to death and resurrection.