Leon Trotsky lived in this Coyoacán house from 1939 until his murder in August 1940. He had arrived in Mexico in 1937 as a guest of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, fleeing Stalin's reach; the Casa Azul housed him at first, but after a quarrel with Rivera he moved to this nearby house. He fortified the windows, posted armed guards, and survived a machine-gun attack in May 1940 before Ramón Mercader finally reached him with an ice axe in his study.
The museum preserves the house essentially intact: study, bedroom, his and Natalia's clothing, even the bullet holes in the walls. The garden contains his ashes and Natalia's, beneath a plinth carrying the hammer and sickle. The mood is unsettling — as the family lived under siege in their last months. Closed Mondays.