The museum is housed in a building designed for the purpose. The design and building materials were chosen to harmonize with the region’s vernacular architecture, and also with the site’s pre-Hispanic structures. This ensures that the buildings fit in with the landscape instead of interfering with, or detracting from its surroundings.
The Cacaxtla murals were discovered by chance in 1975 and since then there have been various investigation and conservation projects which have turned up great quantities of archeological materials. The majority of the objects exhibited in the museum were found in the excavations of the site, alongside a few others found by chance in the surrounding area.
Visitors are welcomed by a basalt sculpture found on the land surrounding the Xochitecatl hill. It dates to the Late Preclassic (100 BC-200 AD), in other words long before Cacaxtla’s apogee. The gallery space is divided into: the Formative Period, covering the earliest settlement at Cacaxtla in the first centuries AD; Painting Techniques; Gods and Men; and the Epiclassic period (650-950), which covers the city’s apogee.
Among the archeological finds that visitors can see are burnishers, architectural items, sculptures of the gods Tlaloc, Xipe and Tlazolteotl, ceramics, cists (burials surrounded by four vertical slabs in a square with another serving as a cover), the aforementioned Lords of Cacaxtla, anthropomorphic figures, bones, ornaments and a pair of urns with modeled personages, one of which was found by the archeologist Beatriz Palavicini in 2008. There are also reproductions of maps and codices from the viceregal period such as the Codex of Cuauhtinchan.
San Miguel del Milagro, C.P. 90720,
Nativitas, Tlaxcala, México.
From Mexico City take Federal Highway 150 towards the turn off for San Rafael Tenanyecac (km 99), continue to San Miguel del Milagro and follow the signs.
+52 (246) 416 0000