Bosque Cuauhtémoc

The Bosque Cuauhtémoc is the big wooded park on the south side of the aqueduct, at the eastern edge of the historic centre. From the late 16th century its land belonged to the Indigenous barrio of San Pedro; the aqueduct crossed it, and the people of the barrio built, repaired and looked after the channel and in return had rights to its water, which made the area known for its vegetable gardens. In the 19th century it was turned into the Paseo de San Pedro, a public promenade with an unusual twist: plots around its edges were granted on 99-year concessions for private houses, which had to be picturesque villas set in gardens. Fountains, among them one with frogs and turtles, and statues of classical gods stood at its roundabouts; a statue of Ceres still survives.

In 1916, as a gesture reclaiming Mexico's pre-Hispanic past, the park was renamed after Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec ruler, and a statue of him was put up; the original is lost, but a 1990 work by the sculptor Francisco Zúñiga keeps him present. In the 1960s, as the concessions ran out, the city took the plots back and demolished most of the houses. Some became playgrounds, a children's hospital and a kindergarten, and four houses were kept for public use, two of them now museums.

The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Alfredo Zalce occupies a small neo-Gothic summer house of 1897 with an octagonal turret, built for a family of French origin. It opened as a gallery in 1971, became a state museum the next year and took the name of the Michoacán artist Alfredo Zalce in 1993; when Zalce died in 2003 he lay in state here. Its stores hold about 3,800 works, including pieces by Posada, Orozco, Diego Rivera and Zalce, shown in changing exhibitions, and it organises a national painting and printmaking biennial. On the east side, the Universidad Michoacana's Museo de Historia Natural Manuel Martínez Solórzano is a small, child-friendly museum of fossils, including a mammoth tusk, and preserved animals, with a greenhouse and cactus garden outside. The rest of the park is shady lawns, paths and old trees, with playgrounds and a skatepark.