2 Best Sights in Puebla, Side Trips from Mexico City

This impressive art and history museum is housed in a pair of adjoining Spanish Colonial hospital buildings from the 1800s with a gorgeous contemporary atrium, several galleries, and a dramatic rooftop terrace with a bar, glass walls, and grand views of the Zócalo. Home to the private collection of pre-Columbian and colonial-era art of Mexican banker and philanthropist Manuel Espinoza Yglesias, Museo Amparo exhibits unforgettable pieces from all over Mexico, including nearly 5,000 pre-Hispanic artifacts. The collection includes colonial-era painting, sculpture, and decorative objects as well as a small modern art section notable for works by Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Miguel Felguérez, and Vicente Rojo.

This former convent (sometimes called Ex-Convento de Santa Mónica) opened in 1688 as a spiritual refuge for women whose husbands were away on business. Despite the Reform Laws of the 1850s, it continued to function until 1934. It is said that the women here invented the famous dish called chiles en nogada, a complex recipe that incorporates the red, white, and green colors of the Mexican flag. In the museum's 23 permanent exhibit galleries, curiosities include the gruesome display of the preserved heart of the convent's founder and paintings in the Sala de los Terciopelos (Velvet Room), in which the feet and faces seem to change position as you view them from different angles.