Museo Amparo

Museo Amparo is a private art museum two blocks south of the cathedral, and many visitors rate it the best museum in Puebla. It was created by the Fundación Amparo, set up by the banker and philanthropist Manuel Espinosa Yglesias in memory of his wife, Amparo Rugarcía, and it opened on 28 February 1991. Its mission covers Mexican art from all periods: pre-Hispanic, viceregal and 19th century, modern and contemporary, and it pairs the permanent collections with a busy programme of temporary shows. Past exhibitions have ranged from Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to Graciela Iturbide, Francisco Toledo and Rodin.

The buildings have their own long story. In the city's first decade the town council gave land on today's 2 Sur for Puebla's first hospital, San Juan de Letrán. Bishop Palafox turned it into a school for girls in the 1640s, and later bishops made it a refuge for women living alone, widowed or separated. After the 19th-century Reform laws it became a family home, and from 1871 it belonged to Vicente Espinosa Bandini, the founder's grandfather. In the 1980s the architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez restored the complex as a museum, and for its 20th anniversary in 2011 Enrique Norten's TEN Arquitectos reworked it with modern galleries around the old stone courtyards.

The heart of the visit is El México Antiguo, eight galleries plus a timeline with about 500 pre-Hispanic pieces from 1200 BC to AD 1500. They are arranged by theme, such as the religious world, bodies and faces, writing, and death, rather than by culture, with works from the Olmec, Maya, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Huastec, west Mexican shaft-tomb and other traditions. A throne back from the Usumacinta basin is the star. Upstairs, rooms furnished like a colonial house hold viceregal and 19th-century paintings, furniture, silver and Talavera, and further galleries show contemporary Mexican art. Finish on the rooftop terrace, with its mirrored installation by Magdalena Fernández and a close-up view of the cathedral towers and the city's domes. Entry is free on Sundays.