Museo Amparo

Housed in an 18th-century Baroque hospital, the Museo Amparo in Puebla displays a major collection of pre-Columbian and colonial Mexican art.

The Museo Amparo was founded in 1991 in a former hospital and mansion of the 18th century. The museum is named for the deceased wife of the founder.

The first eight rooms of the museum are devoted to Pre-Columbian art and artifacts (arte Prehispanico), displaying more than 2,000 objects from the Preclassic period to the Postclassic period.

The section begins with an introduction to Mesoamerican culture that includes a multilingual video exhibition on Mesoamerican art and a timeline comparing its developments with other contemporary cultures around the world.

The first artifacts encountered by visitors are the most important: a Huasteca necklace of 17 skulls carved from bone, the "Olmec Thinker" statue, and a Mayan altar from Palenque. In the following rooms there are hundreds more intriguing statues and figurines, as well as some murals and reliefs.

The museum's second floor is dedicated to Spanish colonial art (arte virreinal) from the 17th to early 19th centuries. Here the interiors of the mansion, dating from the 1870s, have been fully restored.

Highlights of this section include a painting of Our Lady of Guadelupe in a silver frame, Manuel Tolsa's model for the altar in Puebla Cathedral, and an unusual statue of St. Anthony of Padua from the 18th century.