Museo Regional Michoacano

The Museo Regional Michoacano Dr. Nicolás León Calderón is one of the oldest museums in Mexico and, according to INAH, the oldest of all the institute's cultural venues. Governor Mariano Jiménez founded it on 2 February 1886, with the scientist Nicolás León as its first director, and it celebrated its 140th anniversary in January 2026. It started in rooms at the back of the Colegio de San Nicolás, moved to the Palacio de Gobierno in 1889 and, in 1916, to its present home, a baroque mansion on the corner of Allende and Abasolo, diagonally across from the Plaza de Armas. Since 1943 it has been run jointly by INAH, the state government and the Universidad Michoacana.

The house has a story of its own. Its ground floor was built in 1705, and in 1772 it was bought by Isidro Huarte, a wealthy merchant and city councillor, who added the upper floor in 1775; his daughter Ana María Huarte married Agustín de Iturbide and became Empress of Mexico. In the mid-19th century it belonged to Francisca Román de Malo, a lady-in-waiting to Empress Carlota, and Emperor Maximilian stayed here when he visited the city in 1864. The building, in pink cantera with two courtyards, was restored by INAH, which reopened the museum with new displays in 2010-11.

The collection has about 6,000 pieces, some 2,000 of them on show in 12 rooms that tell the story of Michoacán from its earliest settlers to the early 20th century. Highlights include a Chac Mool and other pre-Hispanic pieces, plates from the Relación de Michoacán and other codices, the table on which the Constitution of Apatzingán was signed, and the large 18th-century painting of the procession of Dominican nuns moving to their new convent in Valladolid, one of the museum's most popular works. The walls hold four 20th-century murals: Alfredo Zalce's Los defensores de la integridad nacional in the main stairwell, Federico Cantú's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1954) and works by Grace Greenwood upstairs, and, in the second courtyard, La Inquisición, painted in 1935 by the young Philip Guston, then still called Philip Goldstein, with Reuben Kadish.