Museo de las Momias

Guanajuato's mummies are an accident of geology and municipal accounting. In the nineteenth century, families paid a burial tax to keep a grave; when payment lapsed, remains were disinterred - and in the dry, mineral-rich soil of the Santa Paula cemetery some bodies had not decayed but desiccated, skin and hair intact, faces fixed in expressions that visitors have been reading emotion into ever since. Cemetery workers began charging curious visitors a coin to see them stacked in an ossuary, and the practice hardened into a museum that now displays over a hundred bodies in glass cases: men and women in their burial clothes, a famously small infant mummy, and the arresting figures whose open mouths reflect post-mortem jaw relaxation rather than the buried-alive legends the guides enjoy repeating. The museum remains one of Mexico's most visited and most argued-about attractions - a fixture of Guanajuato childhood memories, a subject of professional debate about conservation and dignity, and unquestionably not for everyone.

What you actually see

• The display halls - over a hundred desiccated bodies in cases.
• The burial clothing - nineteenth-century dress preserved with the dead.
• The interpretive rooms - how the natural mummification happened.
• The cemetery above - Santa Paula, where they came from.

When to go

Any day; mornings and weekdays are calmest. It is a compact hour and a common first stop for Mexican visitors to the city.

Honest expectations

The displays are genuinely confronting and include an infant - families with young or sensitive children should think twice. Photography rules are enforced and fees may apply. Some visitors find the whole enterprise uncomfortable; that reaction is reasonable.

Nearby

The Callejon del Beso, the funicular to the Pipila lookout and Guanajuato's tunnels and plazas are all a short ride east.