4 Best Sights in Bosque de Chapultepec, Mexico City

Architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez's outstanding design provides the proper home for one of the finest archaeological collections in the world. Each salon on the museum's two floors displays artifacts from a particular geographic region or culture. The collection is so extensive that you could easily spend days here, and even that might be barely adequate.

The 12 ground-floor rooms treat pre-Hispanic cultures by region, in the Sala Teotihuacána, Sala Tolteca, Sala Oaxaca (Zapotec and Mixtec peoples), and so on. Objects both precious and pedestrian, including statuary, jewelry, weapons, figurines, and pottery, evoke the intriguing, complex, and frequently warring civilizations that peopled Mesoamerica for the 3,000 years preceding the Spanish invasion. Other highlights include a copy of the Aztec ruler Moctezuma's feathered headdress; a stela from Tula, near Mexico City; massive Olmec heads from Veracruz; and vivid reproductions of Mayan murals in a reconstructed temple. Be sure to see the magnificent reconstruction of the tomb of 7th-century Mayan ruler Pakal, which was discovered in the ruins of Palenque. The nine rooms on the upper floor contain faithful ethnographic displays of current indigenous peoples, using maps, photographs, household objects, folk art, clothing, and religious articles.

Explanatory labels have been updated throughout, some with English translations, and free tours are available at set times from Tuesday through Saturday.

Six theme sections compose this excellent interactive children's discovery museum: My Body, Living Mexico, My Home and Family, My City, the Ideas Laboratory, and the Little Ones Zone, all together comprising more than 200 exhibits. There are also workshops, an IMAX theater (note that tickets are discounted if purchased with museum tickets), a store, and a restaurant. Although exhibits are in Spanish, there are some English-speaking staff on hand.

In the early 16th century, Mexico City's zoo in Chapultepec housed a small private collection of animals belonging to Moctezuma II; it became quasi-public when he allowed favored subjects to visit it. The current zoo opened in the 1920s, and has the usual suspects, as well as some superstar pandas. A gift from China, the original pair—Pepe and Ying Ying—produced the world's first panda cub born in captivity (much to competitive China's chagrin). Today, a descendent of those original pandas, Xin Xin, is one of only three pandas in the world not owned by China. Chapultepec is also home to a couple of California condors plus hippopotamus, giraffes, and kangaroos. The zoo includes the Moctezuma Aviary and is surrounded by a miniature train depot, botanical gardens, and two small lakes. You'll find the entrance on Paseo de la Reforma, across from the Museo Nacional de Antropología.