Museo de la Cultura Maya

The Museo de la Cultura Maya, on Avenida Héroes near the corner of Mahatma Gandhi, is the standout sight in Chetumal and a useful warm-up before any trip to the Maya ruins of southern Quintana Roo or Belize. The exhibition is organised around the three levels of the Maya universe — underworld, earth, sky — using a central ceiba-tree sculpture that runs through the building.

Displays are bilingual and emphasise concepts rather than relics: how the Maya counted and wrote, how the calendar worked, how astronomy informed religion and farming. Interactive tablets let you write your name in glyphs and run through Maya mathematics. Open Tuesday to Sunday, around US$4 entry. Allow two hours.

things to do museum
A story
When the museum was inaugurated in 1994, Mexican authorities considered it the most ambitious Maya museum outside Mérida. Original artefacts are surprisingly scarce — most of the great pieces from Quintana Roo's archaeological sites are kept in Mexico City — so the curators built the museum around scale models, interactive displays and a striking three-storey ceiba-tree sculpture symbolising the Maya cosmos.