Carcamo de Dolores

When the Lerma waterworks began pumping drinking water across the mountains into thirsty Mexico City in 1951, the engineers did something no utility does anymore: they hired Diego Rivera to paint the receiving chamber. His mural Water, Origin of Life covers the floor and walls of the carcamo - the distribution tank - with amoebas, trilobites, diving workers and the hands of humanity, and was designed to be seen rippling under flowing water. The water was eventually diverted because it was dissolving the paint, and the restored chamber now shows the mural dry, viewed from a walkway, with the tunnel mouth still gaping behind it. Outside, Rivera built the companion piece: a monumental fountain-sculpture of Tlaloc, the rain god, lying face-up in a shallow basin, tiled in mosaic and best appreciated from the air - pilots approaching the old airport used it as a landmark. Inside the pavilion, a sound installation by Ariel Guzik turns the chamber's acoustics into a slow instrument.

What you actually see

• The underwater mural - Rivera's origin-of-life cycle painted for flowing water.
• The Tlaloc fountain - the reclining mosaic rain god outside.
• The pump-house pavilion - functionalist 1951 architecture by Ricardo Rivas.
• The sound chamber - Guzik's resonating installation in the tank.

Honest expectations

It is compact - one chamber, one fountain - and remote in the park's second section, so combine it with the Natural History museum next door. Opening hours are modest and Mondays closed. The mural's lower sections show the scars of its underwater decades.

When to go

Dry-season middays make the long park approach pleasant; any day but Monday works. The Tlaloc mosaic photographs best in high sun.

Nearby

The Natural History museum beside it, La Feria's former grounds and the lakes of Chapultepec's second section.