Museo Mural Diego Rivera

Rivera painted Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda in 1947 for the dining room of the Hotel del Prado across the street. When the 1985 earthquake condemned the hotel, the fifteen-metre, thirty-five-tonne fresco was cut free and trundled whole across the avenue to a museum built around it - one room, one masterpiece. The wall repays the pilgrimage: a promenade through the park outside compressing four centuries of Mexican history into a single crowd. Cortes with bloodied hands, Sor Juana, Santa Anna, Juarez, Porfirio Diaz and the revolutionaries all stroll together, and at the center stands la Catrina - Posada's skeleton dandy, given her famous feathered serpent boa here for the first time - holding hands with Rivera painted as a pudgy boy, with Frida Kahlo behind him. Reading panels decode every figure, and the museum salts the room with Posada prints and the mural's storm-tossed history, including the repaired scar where its "God does not exist" inscription once provoked a riot.

History

The mural hung in the Hotel del Prado until the 1985 earthquake badly damaged the hotel; the wall holding it was cut out, a metal frame was built to carry its weight, and the museum was built around the mural in its new place, opening on 19 February 1988 (Wikipedia, Museo Mural Diego Rivera).

What's there

• The mural itself - fifteen metres of history promenading in the Alameda.
• La Catrina - the skeleton in her Sunday best, center stage between Posada and young Rivera.
• The figure key - panels naming all hundred-plus characters.
• The rescue story - how a thirty-five-tonne wall crossed an avenue.

When to go

Any day but Monday; mornings are quietest. Pair it with a walk through the real Alameda outside - the mural is best read fresh from the park it portrays.

Good to know

It is essentially a single-room museum - richly annotated, but under an hour for most visitors. Sundays are free and correspondingly busy. Photography without flash is allowed, but the full mural needs a wide lens.

Nearby

Alameda Central at the door, Bellas Artes at the park's far end and the Franz Mayer museum across the avenue.

Key facts