Museo Soumaya

The Museo Soumaya is the private, non-profit art museum of the Fundación Carlos Slim, named after the businessman's late wife, Soumaya Domit, who died in 1999. It first opened in 1994 at Plaza Loreto in San Ángel, in a converted paper mill, and in 2011 the main collection moved to its present building in Plaza Carso, a mixed-use complex built on old factory land in Nuevo Polanco, just north of Polanco proper. Entry is free every day of the year, and in 2013 it drew more than a million visitors, the most of any art museum in Mexico.

The building is the attraction many people come for. Designed by Mexican architect Fernando Romero, with Ove Arup and Frank Gehry's office as consultants, it rises 46 metres in a twisting, windowless form clad in more than 16,000 silver aluminium hexagons that do not touch the ground or each other. Inside, a white lobby leads to a ramp spiralling around six floors, and the top level is a single column-free hall lit by a translucent roof. Critics have been divided: some praise the shape and others find the galleries cramped, but few visitors leave without a photograph of it.

The foundation's collection runs to some 66,000–70,000 pieces across 30 centuries. The lobby holds Rodin's The Thinker and Gates of Hell, Diego Rivera's last mural, Río Juchitán, and two Tamayo murals. The floors above cover coins, medals and silverwork from New Spain onwards; European old masters such as Cranach, Tintoretto, El Greco, Rubens and Murillo beside New Spanish painters like Villalpando and Cabrera; and Impressionists and avant-garde artists including Monet, Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh, Chagall and Miró. The top floor is devoted to Rodin, Camille Claudel and their circle, together with Dalí's surrealist sculptures; the museum holds the largest group of Rodin casts outside France.