Museo de la Memoria de Tlaxcala

The Museo de la Memoria fills a two-storey mansion at Avenida Independencia 3, right beside the Plaza de la Constitución, the main square of Tlaxcala city. The building dates from the late 16th century, when it belonged to a Franciscan brotherhood, the Cofradía de la Santa Cruz de Jerusalén, and it was remodelled in the 19th century. It has been a museum since 1999. The conversion restored the central courtyard that organises the house and extended the upper floor under translucent domed roofs.

The ground floor holds visitor services, a temporary exhibition room and a bookshop stocked with titles on Tlaxcalan history and culture; the whole upper floor is the permanent exhibition. It covers 1521 to the end of the 18th century and explains what made Tlaxcala different: after long wars with the Mexica, its lords allied with Hernán Cortés, and in return the province kept its own Indigenous government as a república de indios, whose native council ran the whole province from 1540.

The galleries are named La república de naturales (the native republic), El mundo material (the material world and economic life), Las devociones (devotions), La memoria (memory) and La diáspora (the diaspora), with a final section on the period's legacy. Themes include Indigenous self-rule, the beginnings of mestizo culture, the tlacuilo painters who made colonial codices, and religious life. The diaspora room tells how, under a 1591 agreement with Viceroy Luis de Velasco, 400 Tlaxcalan families left to settle the Chichimec lands of northern New Spain, keeping their own neighbourhoods and the right to ride horses and bear arms.

Most displays are reproductions of artworks, codices and documents, scale models, videos and interactive screens, plus some small religious pieces. It is a short visit that pairs well with the cathedral, the Palacio de Gobierno and the Museo Regional, all a few blocks away.