Museo Nacional de Antropologia Travel Guide

Chapultepec Park's outstanding attraction - for many people the main justification for visiting the city at all - is the Museo Nacional de Antropología (Tues-Sun 9am-7pm; US$3.30, free on Sun), one of the world's great museums, not only for its collection, which is vast, rich and diverse, but for the originality and practicality of its design. Opened in 1964, the exhibition halls surround a patio with a small pond and a vast square concrete umbrella supported by a single slender pillar around which splashes an artificial cascade. The halls are ringed by gardens, many of which contain outdoor exhibits. If you're rushed it can all be taken in on one visit, but tickets are valid all day, so it's easy enough, and far more satisfactory, to pick one or two rooms and take in each on several separate visits in one day. Better still, devote more time to the area and spread your visit over two days.

The entrance from Reforma is marked by a colossal statue of the rain god Tlaloc - the story goes that its move here from its original home in the east of the city was accompanied by furious downpours in the midst of a drought. The museum is entered from a large open plaza, at one end of which is a small clearing pierced by a twenty-metre pole from which voladores "fly". This Totonac ceremony is performed several times a day, and loses a lot of its appeal through its commercial nature - an assistant canvasses the crowd for donations as they perform - but it is still an impressive spectacle.