MÉXICO Y SUS MUSEOS

Check the dates before you plan around this. The validity shown for this package has passed, and the price listed is the historic one. Packages of this kind are reissued each season with new dates and rates, so confirm current availability and cost before counting on it —and if you only want the museums themselves, you do not need a package at all: admission is bought at the door of each one.

The museums this kind of circuit is built around. Three are unmissable and they are completely different from each other. The National Museum of Anthropology, in Chapultepec, holds the objects every other museum in the country refers to —the Mexica, Maya, Teotihuacan and Oaxaca halls— and needs two to three hours on its own. The Templo Mayor, beside the Cathedral, is the excavated heart of Tenochtitlan with its own museum of what came out of the ground. And the Palacio de Bellas Artes holds the murals of Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros in a single room. After those come the artists' houses: the Casa Azul in Coyoacán and the Anahuacalli, both sold with timed entry that goes days in advance.

What a guided package is actually worth paying for. Two things: transport between museums that are nowhere near each other, and a guide for muralism and archaeology, where without context you see half of what is in front of you. It is not worth paying for queue-skipping —queues here are short except on Sundays— or for admission, which is low by European or North American standards.

Before you book anything. Almost every museum in the city closes on Monday, so check which day the itinerary runs. Sunday is free for Mexican residents, which means full rooms. And plan a maximum of two major museums in a day: our guide to the city's museums sets out how to build the route yourself.