Three Museums in One Day. Oh My!

Puebla is known for having some of the best food in Mexico. Being a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it’s also known for its many Baroque churches and beautiful colonial architecture.

But what some people may not know, is that Puebla is home to over two dozen museums, most of which are located in the heart of its Historic Center. We could visit one a day for 3-4 weeks!

Every building in the Historic Center of Puebla is gorgeous. Many tourists, like ourselves, walk by these buildings without realizing there’s a museum inside. And what’s great to find out that on certain days, museums have free entry. So far, we have only paid one entry fee for a museum that cost us $3.50 each and that entry fee included a great guide who spoke very good English and answered all of our questions. What a deal!

Jim, an apartment neighbour, recommended that we visit two museums outside of the Historic Centre - the free Army and Air Force Museum and the big Train Museum. We figured that we would do one today and the other on another day.

So we started our day by walking to the Army and Air Force Museum. This two-story free museum has 15 rooms with exhibits recounting significant moments in Mexico’s military history. There are lots of guns, ammunition, uniforms, and miniature battle reenactments scenes.

It also had an exhibit giving credit to women and children who helped out.

Exiting the museum, we walked toward the Historic Centre and noticed another museum Fundación José Luis Bello y Zetina y Museo. This is the one that we paid for.

It is an interesting house museum in the heart of downtown Puebla. It features one of the largest private collections of American, European, and Asian art pieces in Puebla, some of which are almost 2,000 years old. The house itself was beautiful.

The building that houses the Museum began construction in the seventeenth century. At that time it consisted of two levels and the spaces were distributed around two successive courtyards. As time went on, a third level was added.

My favourite room used to be a living room. Members of the Puebla bourgeoisie wanted to imitate the customs of the European aristocracy, so this main room became a music room. Music played an important role during the meetings of the bourgeois society and this room is decorated with figures linked to music as well as a collection of musical instruments.

At one end of the room was a magnificent baroque tubular organ built in 1720 with ayacahuite woods, red cedar, pine, oyamel, oak and flutes of lead and tin alloy. Two people would pump the bellows while a third person play the organ.

Another musical instrument in the room was a piano with vertical bass strings called a Euphonicón. Apparently, this old instrument is the best preserved in the world.

What we saw in this amazing house was definitely worth the entrance fee!

Now we were staying to get hungry and knew that if we ate at La Mendruga, we could enter their museum for free. So we had lunch there.

Museo Casa del Mendrugo Museo Casa del Mendrugo is a fascinating museum located on the second floor of the Casa del Mendrugo restaurant. It features beautiful examples of Talavera pottery and many intricately carved human skulls, bones, and seashells.

This historical building once functioned as an educational institution and Federal Treasury building. Rescued from total abandonment in 2010, a number of important archaeological artifacts were uncovered during its restoration, including a grave with human remains dating back 3,500 years.

The first section of the museum shows photos of and explains the history and reconstruction of the building as well as the grave and other interesting artifacts.

The second part of the museum focuses on Zapotec funeral rites from Oaxaca. All the exhibits have well-written English descriptions so was easy to understand what we were looking at.

It was such an interesting and varied day for us. Even though we have visited several museums, we still have lots more to see!Read more