Museo del Santo

The Museo del Santo honours Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta, the wrestler all of Mexico knew as El Santo, the Silver Masked Man. He was born in Tulancingo on 23 September 1917, fought from 1942 to 1982, starred in some 52 films and died in Mexico City on 5 February 1984. The museum fittingly opened on his birthday, 23 September 2009, at a ceremony led by the then mayor, Jorge Cesáreo Márquez Alvarado, and by El Hijo del Santo.

The collection runs to more than 200 pieces: masks and ring outfits he wore, photographs of him alone and alongside fellow wrestlers, newspaper clippings, film posters and publicity material, and personal belongings that fill in his life away from the ring. A screen plays his movies, and at the entrance a sculpture shows him locking an opponent in la de a caballo, the camel-clutch hold that became his trademark finish.

The museum stands on the boulevard named after the wrestler, in the Ferrocarrilera neighbourhood, and makes up a small museum quarter with two neighbours housed in old railway stations: the Railway Museum, in the station opened in 1917, with seven rooms on the trains that served the city, and the Museo de Datos Históricos, in the first station of 1893, whose archaeology room includes the Huapalcalco feline. About 100 metres away rises a giant silver statue of El Santo, cape flowing and arm outstretched. All three museums are free, so they make an easy morning together.