National Museum of World Cultures

This guide to the National Museum of World Cultures in Mexico City starts with the building's three centuries as Mexico's royal mint, built on the site where the Aztec emperor Moctezuma the Second reportedly kept a windowless meditation chamber. You'll follow its Baroque rebuilding under military engineer Luis Diez de Navarro in the 1730s, the mint's expansion as silver poured in from the mines of New Spain, and its later turns as Mexico's Supreme Court and archive after coining stopped in 1850. It closes with Rufino Tamayo's mural of the Revolution, still covering the lobby wall today.