The island museum occupies a former hotel on the Malecón and offers a useful primer on the natural and cultural history of Cozumel. Four small galleries cover geology and reef ecology, the Maya period, the colonial era, and the modern fishing village.
Highlights include scale models of the larger pre-Columbian sites, salvaged shipwreck artefacts, and a small but evocative section on the 19th-century War of the Castes — which brought Maya refugees to repopulate the island after centuries of abandonment. The rooftop café is a calm spot for a coffee with a view over the channel back to the mainland.