The word mexico means

Mexico would then mean “Place of Mexi” or “Land of the War God.” Another hypothesis suggests that Mēxihco derives from a portmanteau of the Nahuatl words for “moon” (mētztli) and navel (xīctli). This meaning (“Place at the Center of the Moon”) might then refer to Tenochtitlan’s position in the middle of Lake Texcoco.

What is the meaning of the name Mexico?

The name Mexico is a Náhuatl term derived from the words metztli (moon), xictli (navel or center) and co (place). Mexico’s name, therefore, means — the place in the center of the Moon –and refers to the fact that the Aztecs built Tenochtitlán in the middle of the Lake of the Moon (later called Lake Texcoco).

Where does the word Mexico come from?

Mexico comes from the Spanish “México,” a name derived from the Classical Nahuatl “Mēxihco,” a kingdom that encompassed most of the western shores of Lake Tetzcohco, Lake Xāltocān, and Lake Tzompanco, ruled from the famous island on which the twin cities of Tenōchtitlan and Tlatelōlco were established.

What is Mexico’s real name?

Estados Unidos Mexicanos
The formal name of the country is Estados Unidos Mexicanos, often translated as “United Mexican States” or “United States of Mexico.”

What was Mexico before Mexico?

After gaining independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico officially became the “United Mexican States.” The American independence movement had inspired Mexican leaders of that era and since Mexico, in fact, also was a territory composed of states, the name stuck and became official in 1824.

Who came up with the word Mexican?

Most historians believe that the word “Mexico” came from the Nahuatl for “place of the Mexica,” who were the nomadic peoples who found their way into the Valley of Mexico from a mythical northern land called Aztlán, the ancestral home of the Aztec peoples.

Most historians believe that the word “Mexico” came from the Nahuatl for “place of the Mexica,” who were the nomadic peoples who found their way into the Valley of Mexico from a mythical northern land called Aztlán, the ancestral home of the Aztec peoples.

What did Aztecs call Mexico?

The legendary origin of the Aztec people has them migrating from a homeland called Aztlan to what would become modern-day Mexico. While it is not clear where Aztlan was, a number of scholars believe that the Mexica—as the Aztec referred to themselves—migrated south to central Mexico in the 13th century.

What does Mexico call Christmas?

The Mexican celebration of Christmas is called las posadas and begins on December 16. The ninth evening of las posadas is Buena Noche, Christmas Eve.

Who owned Mexico first?

In 1521, Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes conquered the Aztecs and Mexico became a Spanish colony. For 300 years Spain ruled the land until the early 1800s. At that time the local Mexicans revolted against Spanish rule. Father Miguel Hidalgo declared Mexico’s independence with his famous cry of “Viva Mexico”.

Is Mexico in USA?

Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America.
Mexico.

Who came first Maya or Aztec?

The Mayans are an older people and were around a thousand years before the Aztecs even arrived in Central America. The Aztecs were the dominant culture in Mexico at the time of Cortez’s arrival in Mexico in the 1500s. The Mayans by then had deteriorated into a decadent and decrepit race living on past glory.

Did Mexico fight in ww2?

Mexico became an active belligerent in World War II in 1942 after Germany sank two of its tankers. The Mexican foreign secretary, Ezequiel Padilla, took the lead in urging other Latin American countries to support the Allies as well.

Is Mexico a Spanish colony?

While Mexico remained a colony, rulers that governed Mexico came from mainland Spain. However, both native Mexicans and Creoles (people of Spanish descent born in Mexico) were unhappy with this system. They wanted to govern the country themselves.

What is the DNA of a Mexican?

But most people in Mexico or of Mexican descent these days are not indigenous but rather mestizo, meaning they have a mixture of indigenous, European, and African ancestry.

What is my race if I am Hispanic?

OMB defines “Hispanic or Latino” as a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.

What is a Mexican American called?

Chicano or Chicana is a chosen identity for many Mexican Americans in the United States. The label Chicano is sometimes used interchangeably with Mexican American, although the terms have different meanings.

Is Mexico a Mayan or Aztec?

The main difference between Aztec and Mayan is that Aztec civilization was in central Mexico from 14th to 16th century and expanded throughout Mesoamerica, while the Mayan empire branched all over a vast territory in northern Central America and southern Mexico from 2600 BC.

Who lived in Mexico before the Aztecs?

Mexico was first populated more than 13,000 years ago by complex indigenous civilisations. The great Aztec empire was preceded by advanced civilisations including the Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec and Maya.

What is Mexico City’s nickname?

Many of these palaces can still be seen today, leading to Mexico City’s nickname of “The city of palaces” given by Alexander Von Humboldt.

Is there Santa in Mexico?

Santa Claus and Mexican Christmas traditions
Traditionally, in Mexico, children don’t receive presents from Santa Claus. However, his popularity is growing in Mexican Christmas celebrations. Because of this, some children will receive gifts on 24 December – or Christmas Eve – as well as on 6 January for Dia de Reyes.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Several hypotheses seek to explain the etymology of Mexico which dates, at least, back to 14th century Mesoamerica. Among these are expressions in the Nahuatl language like «Place in the middle of the century plant» (Mexitli) and «Place in the Navel of the Moon» (Mēxihco), although there is still no consensus among experts.^[1]

As far back as 1590, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum showed that the northern part of the New World was known as «America Mexicana» (Mexican America), as Mexico City was the seat for the New Spain viceroyalty. New Spain was not the old name for Mexico, but was in actuality the name of all Spanish colonial possessions in North America, the Caribbean, and The Philippines; since New Spain was not actually a state or a contiguous piece of land, in modern times, «Mexico» would have been a jurisdiction under the command of the authorities in modern Mexico City. Under the Spaniards, Mexico was both the name of the capital and its sphere of influence, most of which exists as Greater Mexico City and the State of Mexico. Some parts of Puebla, Morelos and Hidalgo were also part of Spanish-era Mexico.

In 1821, the continental part of New Spain seceded from Spain during the Trienio Liberal, in which Agustin de Iturbide marched triumphantly with his Army of the Three Guarantees (religion, independence, and unity). This was followed by the birth of the short-lived First Mexican Empire that used the «Mexico» name according to the convention used previously by Roman Empire (Latin: Imperium Romanum) and the Holy Roman Empire, whereby the capital gives rise to the name of the Empire. This was the first recorded use of «Mexico» as a country title.

After the Empire fell and the Republic was established in 1824, a Federation name form was adopted; which was, at most times, more de jure than de facto. The Mexican name stuck, leading to the formation of the Mexican Republic which formally is known as the United Mexican States.

Complications arose with the capital’s former colloquial and semi-official name «Ciudad de Mexico, Distrito Federal (Mexico, D.F.)», which appears on postal addresses and is frequently cited in the media, thus creating a duplication whereas the shortened name was «Mexico, D.F., Mexico». Legally, the name was Distrito Federal (Federal District or District of the Federation). This ended with the change in statute of Mexico City into a state in 2016. Today it is officially called «Ciudad de México, México» abbreviated CDMX, Mexico.

The official name of the country is the «United Mexican States» (Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos), since it is a federation of thirty-two states. The official name was first used in the Constitution of 1824, and was retained in the constitutions of 1857 and 1917. Informally, «Mexico» is used along with «Mexican Republic» (República Mexicana). On 22 November 2012, outgoing Mexican President Felipe Calderón proposed changing the official name of the country to México.^[2]

Names of the country[edit]

Anahuac (meaning land surrounded by water) was the name in Nahuatl given to what is now Mexico during Pre-Hispanic times. When the Spanish conquistadors besieged México-Tenochtitlan in 1521, it was almost completely destroyed. It was rebuilt during the following three years, after which it was designated as a municipality and capital of the vice-royalty of New Spain. In 1524 the municipality of Mexico City was established, known as México Tenustitlan, and as of 1585 became officially known simply as Ciudad de México.^[3] The name Mexico was used only to refer to the city, and later to a province within New Spain. It was not until the independence of the vice-royalty of New Spain that «Mexico» became the traditional and conventional short-form name of the country.

During the 1810s, different insurgent groups advocated and fought for the independence of the vice-royalty of New Spain. This vast territory was composed of different intendencias and provinces, successors of the kingdoms and captaincies general administered by the vice-regal capital of Mexico City. In 1813, the deputies of the Congress of Anahuac signed the document Acta Solemne de la Declaración de Independencia de la América Septentrional, («Solemn Act of the Declaration of Independence of Northern America»). In 1814 the Supreme Congress of the revolutionary forces that met at Apatzingán (in today’s state of Michoacán) drafted the first constitution,^[4] in 1814 whereby the name América Mexicana («Mexican America») was chosen for the country. The head of the insurgent forces, however, was defeated by the royalist forces, and the constitution was never enacted.

Servando Teresa de Mier, in a treatise written in 1820 in which he discussed the reasons why New Spain was the only overseas territory of Spain that had not yet secured its independence, chose the term Anáhuac to refer to the country.^[5] This term, in Nahuatl, was used by the Mexica to refer to the territory they dominated. According to some linguists, it means «near or surrounded by waters», probably in reference to Lake Texcoco,^[6] even though it was also the word used to refer to the world or the terrestrial universe (as when used in the phrase Cem Anáhuac, «the entire earth») and in which their capital, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, was at the centre and at the same time at the centre of the waters, being built on an island in a lake.^[7]

In September 1821, the independence of Mexico was finally recognized by Spain, achieved through an alliance of royalist and revolutionary forces. The former tried to preserve the status quo of the vice-royalty, menaced by the liberal reforms taking place in Spain, through the establishment of an autonomous constitutional monarchy under an independence hero. Agustín was crowned and given the titles of: Agustin de Iturbide por la divina providencia y por el Congreso de la Nación, primer Emperador Constitucional de Mexico (Agustín de Iurbide First Constitutional Emperor of Mexico by Divine Providence and by the Congress of the Nation). The name chosen for the country was Imperio Mexicano, «Mexican Empire». The empire collapsed in 1823, and the republican forces drafted a constitution the following year whereby a federal form of government was instituted. In the 1824 constitution, which gave rise to the Mexican federation, Estados Unidos Mexicanos (also Estados-unidos mexicanos)—literally the Mexican United States or Mexican United-States (official English translation: United Mexican States)—was adopted as the country’s official name.^[8][9] The constitution of 1857 used the term República Mexicana (Mexican Republic) interchangeably with Estados Unidos Mexicanos;^[10] the current constitution, promulgated in 1917, only uses the latter^[11] and United Mexican States is the normative English translation.^[12] The name «Mexican Empire» was briefly revived from 1863 to 1867 by the conservative government that instituted a constitutional monarchy for a second time under Maximilian of Habsburg.

On 22 November 2012, incumbent President Felipe Calderón sent to the Mexican Congress a piece of legislation to change the country’s name officially to simply Mexico. To go into effect, the bill would have to be passed by both houses of Congress, as well as a majority of Mexico’s 31 state legislatures. Coming within just a week before Calderón turned power over to then president elect Enrique Peña Nieto, many of the president’s critics saw the proposal as nothing more than a symbolic gesture.^[13]

Etymology[edit]

According to one legend,^[14] the war deity and patron of the Mexica Huitzilopochtli possessed Mexitl or Mexi as a secret name. Mexico would then mean «Place of Mexi» or «Land of the War God.»

Another hypothesis^[15] suggests that Mēxihco derives from a portmanteau of the Nahuatl words for «moon» (mētztli) and navel (xīctli). This meaning («Place at the Center of the Moon») might then refer to Tenochtitlan’s position in the middle of Lake Texcoco. The system of interconnected lakes, of which Texcoco formed the center, had the form of a rabbit, which the Mesoamericans pareidolically associated with the moon. Still another hypothesis^[15] offers that it is derived from Mectli, the goddess of maguey.

These last two suggestions are deprecated by linguist Frances Karttunen,^[16] since the final form «Mēxihco» differs in vowel length from both proposed elements. Nahua toponymy is full of mysticism, however, as it was pointed out by the Spanish missionary Bernardino de Sahagún. In his mystic interpretation, Mexico could mean «Center of the World,» and, in fact, it was represented as such in various codices, as a place where all water currents that cross the Anahuac («world» or «land surrounded by seas») converge (see image on the Mendoza codex). It is thus possible that the other meanings (or even the «secret name» Mexi) were then popular pseudoetymologies.

Mexico and Mexica[edit]

The name Mexico has been commonly described to be a derivative from Mexica, the autonym of the Aztec people,^[17] but said affirmation is controversial as there are many competing etymologies for both terms^[18] and given the fact that in many old sources, ‘Mexica’ simply appears as the way to call the inhabitants of the island of Mexico (where Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco were located) in their native Nahuatl;^[19] implying that instead of Mexica being the source of the name ‘Mexico’, the opposite would be true.^[20]

Phonetic evolution[edit]

The Nahuatl word Mēxihco (Nahuatl pronunciation: [meːˈʃiʔko] (listen)) was transliterated as «México» using Medieval Spanish orthography, in which the x represented the voiceless postalveolar fricative ([ʃ], the equivalent of English sh in «shop»), making «México» pronounced as [ˈmeʃiko]. At the time, Spanish j represented the voiced postalveolar fricative ([ʒ], like the English s in «vision», or French j today). However, by the end of the fifteenth century j had evolved into a voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant as well, and thus both x and j represented the same sound ([ʃ]). During the sixteenth century this sound evolved into a voiceless velar fricative ([x], like the ch in Scottish «loch»), and México began to be pronounced [ˈmexiko].^[21]

Given that both x and j represented the same new sound (/x/), and in lack of a spelling convention, many words that originally had the /ʃ/ sound, began to be written with j (e.g. it wasn’t uncommon to find both exército and ejército used during the same time period, even though that due to historicity, the correct spelling would have been exército). The Real Academia Española, the institution in charge of regulating the Spanish language, was established in 1713, and its members agreed to simplify spelling, and set j to represent /x/ regardless of the original spelling of the word, and x to represent /ks/. (The ph spelling underwent a similar removal, in that it was simplified as f in all words, e.g. philosophía became filosofía.)

Nevertheless, there was ambivalence in the application of this rule in Mexican toponyms: México was used alongside Méjico, Texas and Tejas, Oaxaca and Oajaca, Xalixco and Jalisco, etc., as well as in proper and last names: Xavier and Javier, Ximénez and Jiménez, Roxas and Rojas are spelling variants still used today. In any case, the spelling Méjico for the name of the country is little used in Mexico or the rest of the Spanish-speaking world today. The Real Academia Española itself recommends the spelling «México».

In present-day Spanish, México is pronounced [ˈmexiko] or [ˈmehiko], the latter pronunciation used mostly in dialects of southern Mexico, the Caribbean, much of Central America, some places in South America, and the Canary Islands and western Andalusia in Spain where [x] has become a voiceless glottal fricative ([h]),^[22][23] while [ˈmeçiko] in Chile and Peruvian coast where voiceless palatal fricative [ç] is an allophone of [x] before palatal vowels [i], [e].

Normative spelling in Spanish[edit]

México is the predominant Spanish spelling variant used throughout Latin America, and universally used in Mexican Spanish, whereas Méjico is used infrequently in Spain and Argentina. During the 1990s, the Spanish Royal Academy recommended that México be the normative spelling of the word and all its derivatives, even though this spelling does not match the pronunciation of the word, but that both forms with “x” or “j” are still orthographically correct.^[24] Since then, the majority of publications adhere to the new normative in all Spanish-speaking countries even though the disused variant can still be found.^[25] The same rule applies to all Spanish toponyms in the United States, and on some occasions in the Iberian Peninsula, even though in most official or regional languages of Spain (Asturian, Leonese and Catalan) and Portuguese, the x is still pronounced [ʃ].

See also[edit]

• Mexican state name etymologies

References[edit]

Mexico loves anyone who knows, who apprehends and who appropriates Mexico’s own very distinct cultural and social dynamics. Those who’ve learned to love the country, who’ve trodden through its years, decades and centuries will dwell in it forever: from its murky origins, to its wars, interventions and demonstrations. But the meaning of the word Mexico is ever a question unanswered.

Museums, history classes and geography lessons all classes teach the mythological and historical origins of the great Mexico-Tenochtitlan, but always there are hidden, and suspiciously beautiful origins -to the  the country, and to the meaning of the word Mexico, too. Among these hidden histories is the origin of the City of Mexico as “the navel of the moon.”

Among the theories for the origin of this idea is one which came up in one of the conferences of the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics. Dr. Gutierre Tibón, a naturalized Mexican of Italian origins, explained his hypothesis about the meaning of “Mexico.” According to Tibón, the word is of aztekatl origin. Dissecting it, one learns that meztli means “moon” – and xictli means “navel.” Everything thus becomes clear: Mexico means nothing more than “place in the navel of the moon.” It is said that even upon being asked “Where are you from?” the inhabitant of this Valley of Mexico would answer that they came from “the navel of the moon.”

The navel then came to be associated with a site of political, commercial, economic and social importance, each of them demonstrated in the four directions of the universe. The highest of these was heaven, the thirteenth, the tlalxico, not only the navel of this world, but of one beyond. As a hole, deep and grouped with others, was founded where the rabbit of the moon was reflected and expanded over an island in the great Lake Texcoco. Never fully knowing this, the place became the seat of the soul and the point of the greatest spirituality in Mesoamerica, and the place of cosmic harmony that emanates from a divine fire.

Does this explain the whole meaning of the word Mexico? By 1966, Dr. Juan Luna Cardenas presented a lecture “Mexico, a study of its meaning,” which explains the Aztekatl, the name of a race who spread throughout the Americas. It was one branch of a larger main tribe: the Aztekatl -Tultekatl. Although the Aztekatl consisted of multiple clans, the culture was centered in the city of Tula, in present day Hidalgo state. A major invasion of tribes of Atapazkah, Apache and Navajo tribes from further north, forced the Aztekatl-Tultekatl to separate and to resettle in disparate parts of the country.

While one of those tribes considered Metzitli, the moon, as a protector, their human leader, one “Witzilo Poctli” that is “Huitzilopochtli,” was distinguished as a great warrior. Carrying a trident, he led his people to join with another tribe called the Wewe Tenockatl, and together they the Tultekatl Confederation against invasion by barbarians at the battle of Tultitlan. The Metzitli and Tenockatl then in alliance sought a new place to settle, and the resulting settlement was thus “Metzikatl-Tenockatl.”

Metziko-Tenoctitlan was then “the place of the Metzikah, Metzitli followers, those who were entrusted to the Moon” and the “place of Tenockatl.” In the words of Dr. Luna, “the name of our country, attaches meaning to the history of the people who founded the great city of Metziko- Tenoçtitlan and who were Aztekatl by race and Metzikatl Tultekatl by clan.” The decorative written “x” came because the Spanish conquerors reduced the name of the great city of “Metziko” to “Mexico” because at the time the letter x was pronounced as a  / sh /, resembling what they  heard in the spoken language of the people at that time. In later centuries, the x sound was changed to / h /, (j in Spanish) and hence, even on the the Old Continent it was written as ‘Mejico.’

ILUMINA is an interactive sculpture of light and sound fed by the collective energy of people’s hearts.

Art and technology are two faces of human creativity, two that are also closely related, despite the differences they apparently have with each other. What art does on many occasions has been achieved thanks to a specific technical development, a technology whose existence allows the artists to enhance or limit their creative work. Yes, it conditions it, but possibly also encourages it to transcend those limitations.

In this sense, the relationship between one and another human activities could be found in virtually any era, but it is certainly in recent times when technology has a presence, so persistent, somehow so inescapable, that art has been benefited for incorporating it. Both as a resource, an instrument, as part of the examination of contemporary reality, when many of our practices and interactions almost necessarily pass through a technological device.

Thus, somehow the ideal professed by Nietzsche on the need to transform life in a work of art, but this time through art and technology. Somehow the aesthetic sensibility, the discovery of the admirable or the frankly beautiful that any of us can perceive, finds a vehicle, a means of transmission and expression in how art can be magnified through technology.

Nowadays, it is becoming more and more complex to achieve high levels of consciousness, and to create a community without being outside of technology, but ww can use it as a tool to improve our sensitive abilities. To the same extent that we depend on technology to survive, it has become part of our lives, even in its most spiritual and even transcendental recesses. Art, now more than ever, demands to be a vehicle to explore different states that bring us closer to the dimensions of the infinite

Ilumina is an installation created by the artist Pablo Gonzalez Vargas, who through a deep exploration with the power of interconnectivity, proposes a method to improve the energy field of the planet. Pablo Gonzalez created a majestic interactive sculpture of light and sound that is activated by the emotional states of people, generating a beautiful light show and a sound landscape where the participants enter a state of coherence and deep harmony with themselves and with each other.

Ilumina is a metallic art monument, completed with aluminum and LED lights that together form an architectural piece full of harmony. The piece of art combines technology with a design of ancient wisdom. Ilumina has a program that responds to external stimuli, being able to shine more while more “coherent” is the group that hosts, generating a unique shared experience.

Ilumina is a chilling visual experience, and the volunteers who participate in the exercise of meditative immersion that lasts three minutes, are transported to a state of coherence and deep harmony with themselves, with their fellow participants and with the cosmos through a patented fusion of modern technology and transpersonal art.

The biometric sensors are connected to the ear lobes of each participant, which measures their unique state of coherence and averages them together. This is how lighting design and moving soundscapes respond to a unique algorithm, a product of HeartMath that uses biometric sensors for personal self-training in the regulation of emotional states where the sculpture becomes brighter to the extent that the users experiment with their emotions.

The team that created Ilumina included about 20 people from different disciplines and contributions. There was a large industrial design team that shaped the exact model that was taken to manufacturing. Marco Kalach worked with an expert manufacturing workshop, because as it is a public use facility in particular events, it had to comply with all the rules, structural regulations and with protection codes. The executive producer of the project was Gaby Vargas, who was responsible for the expertise at HeartMath, and joined by mexican musicians and audio engineers to make the experience of 360 degrees of immersive sound, led by Billy Mendez. The lighting team, directed by Paolo Montiel, coordinated all the programming and lighting design that makes symbiosis with the audio.

It was at Burning Man 2012, where Pablo Gonzalez Vargas created an art car called Mayan Warrior: a luminescence project and a spectacular audio show featuring pieces by the artist Alex Gray and musical performances by elite artists from Mexico and around the world.

In the penultimate edition of Burning Man, Pablo Gonzalez and his team decided to go a step beyond the great proposal that is Mayan Warrior, by presenting Ilumina, this piece of sacred geometry that radiates not only light but an algorithmic sacrality, it’s as mystical and hypnotic as an art piece can get. The tower of almost 12 meters high illuminated the Nevada desert at the Burning Man Festival 2017, and users managed to enter a mental state full of concentration characterized by a complete absorption, a wonderful moment of loss of the notion of spacetime.

It is expected that later there will be replicas of these sculptures, so that they can reach new locations around the world, and we can experience this amazing spectacle of light and the soundscape that connects us with the profound mysticism that exists in ourselves and that highlights the interconnectivity of our planet with the global energy fields.

Here are some photos of this beautiful project, in which lies the probability of a coherent and luminous future that would be worth living.

If you want to know more about this beautiful project or about the creative artist and allies that integrate it, visit their social media channels:

Ilumina Art Installation

Sitio web //  Facebook //  Instagram

Chilangos may cherish their reputation for never reading, but Mexico City libraries present a very contrary picture. 
 

Though the internet makes lots more information available to lots more people, Mexico City libraries have simply not been supplanted. Charged with continually re-inventing themselves, and their places in the public imagination, one can still encounter eras gone by and great historical minds in a library as in few other places.

Knowledge, after all, belongs to everyone. Opening a book, reading it at a study, or just meeting in the silence of one these Mexico City libraries enhances concentration, and provides a welcome respite from everything going on out there in the world. 

Of all Mexico City libraries, the oldest were part of the church and one or another of its offshoot organizations. Among these was the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, founded in the 1530s and surviving today as the Biblioteca José María Lafragua. Most of these ecclesiastical libraries were not truly open to the public, and Mexico had to wait for the  National Library of Mexico, inaugurated by Benito Juárez in 1867 to enjoy the benefits of a truly public library system.

The list below is intended to let you enjoy some of that system, too. 

José Vasconcelos Library

Opened just ten years ago, in 2006, the Vasconcelos is visited by thousands for the sheer spectacle of its innovative design. Graced by the iconic whale from artist, Gabriel Orozco, it’s always a good library for art and visual spectacle. The facade retains something of a colonial appearance, but for sheer scale, and jaw-dropping space, the interior must be experienced.

Address: Eje 1 Norte Mosqueta S / N, Buenavista
Website 

UNAM Central Library 

We’ve written a lot about it in these pages, but the UNAM library with the Juan O’Gorman murals remains one of the most outstanding of all Mexico City libraries. As a UNESCO site with some 428,000 volumes in the collection, it’s the biggest in Mexico, but lots of folks visit just to see the facade and the surrounding grounds. 

Address: Circuito Interior S / N, Coyoacán, Ciudad Universitaria
Website

National Library of Mexico

Opened by Benito Juárez in 1867, there’s still a good one million books inside, today administered by the folks from UNAM. Originally located in the San Agustín church in the city center, the current building was opened in 1979. Geometric, and massive, it’s an extraordinary place to visit.

Address: Av. Universidad 3000, Coyocacan
Website

Miguel Lerdo de Tejada Library

Specializing in economic materials, this collection of some 86,350 books and 114,852 journals is administered by the Secretary of Finance and Public Credit. Founded in 1928, it’s one of the cities true public art spectacles. Inside the main nave of the old Oratory of San Felipe Neri “El Nuevo,” the baroque façade outside is just the beginning. Inside, the murals are futuristic, and not to be missed.

Address: Av. República de el Salvador 49, Centro Histórico, col. Centro Histórico

Library of Congress of the Union

One of Centro’s truly outstanding historical buildings, for centuries it was the convent of the Clarisas from the 16th century. Today it’s something like a “Library of Congress” with a stunning collection of publications and artifacts, but also with a lush, deep, dark intellectual interior, that beckons from centuries past. 

Address: Tacuba 29, Centro Histórico

Photographs this page: Flickr – Creative Commons