4 Best Sights in Side Trips from Mexico City, Mexico

Located in a modern business district in Puebla's southwestern outskirts, a 15-minute drive from the city center, this striking white contemporary building with curving white-concrete walls facing a courtyard with a reflecting pool is arguably as famous for its architecture as for the collection within. Renowned Japanese architect Toyo Itō designed the museum, paying homage to Puebla's rich history of Baroque art and design, which traces back to the city's settlement by the Spanish in the 1530s. One exhibit that interprets this relationship with a particular flourish is an interactive scale-model of Puebla's Centro Histórico that lets you see just how many buildings have been influenced by this important movement that spanned the early 17th through the mid-18th centuries. Other galleries are devoted to Baroque paintings, classical music, literature, theater, and other disciplines. On the second level, a stylish restaurant continues the building's beautiful design and serves quite tasty contemporary Mexican cuisine.

This remarkable museum on a quiet street south of the Plaza de Armas showcases the collection of the decidedly eccentric artist, antiquarian, and decorator from Fort Dodge, Iowa, who traveled the world amassing an incredible array of works before settling in Cuernavaca in 1962. Ceramics, antique furniture, sculptures, paintings, and tapestries fill the restored 16th-century monastery, which is directly behind the Catedral de Cuernavaca. A number of Brady's works depict his illustrious friends, who included Josephine Baker, Peggy Guggenheim, and actor Geoffrey Holder. They're all magnificently arranged in rooms decorated with brightly painted tiles. Upon his death in 1986, Brady left the house and collection to the city government to be turned into a museum.

This Moorish-style 18th-century house with archways, an ornate fireplace, soaring beam ceilings, and a finely detailed facade contains a wonderful little art museum that includes a mix of colonial works, historic photographs, and rotating contemporary exhibits. The space also occasionally hosts music and cultural events. It's also commonly known as Casa Humboldt, in honor of the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who stayed here in 1803.

The former home of renowned mid-20th-century silversmith William G. Spratling houses some 140 of the artist's original designs plus a vast collection of both original and reproduction pre-Columbian artifacts. Exhibits also explain the working of colonial mines.