Museo Naval México

The Museo Naval México is the Mexican Navy's museum in the port of Veracruz, on Calle Mariano Arista 418 in the historic centre, a few blocks from the harbour and the Zócalo. It occupies the first home of the Heroica Escuela Naval Militar, a long white two-storey building with wrought-iron balconies, and its purpose is to show and preserve the Navy's heritage and the maritime history in which Mexico has taken part. With some 26 to 30 exhibition rooms and more than 1,500 objects, it is described as the largest naval museum in the country.

The naval school opened in Veracruz in 1897, under Porfirio Díaz, and its building was put up in 1903. In April 1914, when US forces landed to occupy the port, the cadets and their officers defended the school, and the building was badly damaged in the fighting; the episode is why the academy carries the title "Heroica". The school reopened here in 1919, and when it moved to its new campus at Antón Lizardo in 1952 the building became the Navy's training centre until 1993. President Ernesto Zedillo opened the Museo Histórico Naval in the old school on 1 July 1997, and on 21 April 2014, for the centenary of the defence of Veracruz, it was redesigned and renamed Museo Naval México.

The rooms run in order from pre-Hispanic navigation and cartography through the siege of Tenochtitlan, the Manila galleon, independence, the foreign interventions and the Porfiriato to the Revolution, the Second World War and the modern Navy. Among the pieces on show are shells fired by US ships in 1914, the flag of the light battleship Anáhuac and the foundations of the 18th-century wall that once surrounded the city, along with scale ship models, many of them built in wood by Navy personnel, uniforms, weapons and navigation instruments. Highlights include a room on the sail training ship Cuauhtémoc, a full-size helicopter in the naval aviation section, a ship simulator that recreates entering and leaving the port of Veracruz, and a commemorative room on the 1914 defence with a recreation of the cadets' dormitory.