Here’s a lesson we learned the hard way in Mexico City: plan your museum days carefully, because most of them are closed on Mondays. We found ourselves with a free Monday and a city full of shuttered doors — until we discovered a place we’d somehow missed on our last visit: Museo Soumaya.
Located just north of the Polanco neighborhood, Soumaya is hard to miss. The building itself is a statement — a gleaming, irregular silver structure that looks like something between a sculpture and a spaceship. It’s modern and a little eccentric, which, it turns out, is a pretty good preview of what’s inside.
More Floors Than You’re Ready For
We walked in with zero expectations and zero idea how big this place actually was. That second part matters. A lot. By the time we reached the top, we were the kind of tired where your brain just… stops processing art. There is no placard interesting enough at that point. You’re just a person with feet.
The first floor sets an interesting tone: full of robotically carved replicas of famous sculptures — think Michelangelo’s David and other iconic works, recreated with what we’re told was a precision robotic process rather than traditional casting. It sounds gimmicky, but honestly? They’re impressive. Worth the stop.
Then comes the second floor. We’re going to be honest: skip it. Unless you have a deep, abiding affection for vintage televisions, ornate dollhouses, antique clocks, and pianos arranged in no apparent thematic order, you’re going to stand there and ask yourself what you’re looking at. We did. Repeatedly.
The Good Stuff Is in the Middle (and the Bottom)
Floor three picked things back up — European paintings from artists you’ve actually heard of, including what we’re pretty sure was a Cézanne. It felt like a well-edited survey of the kind of art that makes you glad museums exist.
But floor four was the highlight for us: Mexican art. There were murals, there were paintings, and there was an unfinished Diego Rivera that stopped us cold. No explanatory plaque. No context whatsoever. Just this massive, strange, incomplete work featuring what appeared to be Uncle Sam, a figure representing the British government, and — we’re pretty sure — Stalin. All in the same mural. We have so many questions. Did Rivera die before finishing it? Did he abandon it? We need answers and we haven’t found them yet.
The Rodin Is at the Top — Plan Accordingly
The museum’s crown jewel — reportedly the largest collection of Rodin sculptures in Mexico — lives on the top floor. We got there. We looked. But we were so thoroughly museum-brained by that point that we couldn’t give it the attention it deserved.
If Rodin is your whole reason for coming (and it’s a legitimate reason), here’s our advice: take the elevator as high as it goes, walk the ramp the rest of the way up, and then work your way down through the floors. Don’t save the best for last in a building with this many levels.
Museo Soumaya is genuinely worth your time — just go in knowing it’s bigger than it looks, stranger than you’d expect, and totally free.
Have you been to Museo Soumaya? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
Thanks for stopping by! Check out our Go See Do Explore Podcast, available wherever you listen to podcasts. To read more about this trip, check out the Returning to Mexico City Trip Report Page. To read about some of our previous trips, visit my Trips Page. If you like my photos be sure to “like” my Facebook Page and follow me on Instagram! For my list of gadgets to make your travels easier, click here.