El Paraguas and the Central Courtyard
Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, with Jose Chavez Morado (1919 to 2013) · 1964
Step out of the entrance hall and you are in an enormous courtyard half covered by a single roof that seems to float on one column. The column is sheathed in bronze reliefs and water pours down around it in a continuous curtain, so that the sound of falling water follows you through the whole building. The structure is called the Umbrella, El Paraguas, and it is the signature of the museum's architect, Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, who designed the building in a single extraordinary year for its opening in nineteen sixty four.
The column carries a bronze relief by the sculptor Jose Chavez Morado, with the Indigenous world on one side and the arrival of Europe on the other, and an eagle and a jaguar at the base, the two great warrior orders of the Mexica. Look up at the roof and you will see the canopy is suspended from cables that fan out from the column, a feat of engineering that was tested and tested again before it was built. Around the courtyard the halls open in a horseshoe, ground floor for archaeology and upper floor for the living Indigenous cultures, so that the museum's plan is itself a map of Mexican history.
The museum was built in Chapultepec Park as a national statement, and it is still the most visited museum in the country. The courtyard is where visitors stop to rest and decide which halls to see; the great Mexica hall is straight ahead, the Maya to the right. A pond at the far end recalls the lake on which Tenochtitlan stood. Standing under the falling water for a moment before you go on is part of the experience, and the best time is late afternoon, when light slants under the roof.
Did You Know? The whole museum, including the Umbrella, was designed and built in about nineteen months so that it could open in September nineteen sixty four.
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