Diego Rivera spent the last decades of his life amassing one of the largest private collections of pre-Hispanic art in Mexico — some 60,000 objects from Aztec, Olmec, Teotihuacan, and Mayan cultures. He designed this building himself, in the volcanic-rock fields south of Coyoacán, to house the collection and bequeath it to the people of Mexico.
The Anahuacalli — "house surrounded by water" in Nahuatl — is shaped like a stepped pyramid clad in dark volcanic stone, with interior mosaics of obsidian and quartz on the ceilings. It is one of the most striking pieces of 20th-century architecture in Mexico City and rarely crowded — partly because it is half an hour south of Coyoacán. A combined ticket with the Casa Azul is available.