INAH reopens Cuernavaca's museum of traditional medicine in Maximilian's former country house

Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) has reopened the Museum of Traditional Medicine and Herbalism in Cuernavaca, Morelos, with a new exhibition on medicinal plants and the healing knowledge and practices that are still in use today. INAH announced the reopening on October 29 in its Bulletin 503.

The museum is part of INAH's Ethnobotanical Garden in the Acapantzingo neighborhood. The house it occupies is the old Villa del Olindo, a country house that Maximilian of Habsburg had built in 1865, according to INAH. The head of INAH's Morelos office, Víctor Hugo Valencia Valera, said this is the fourth time the museum's content has been updated. The previous exhibition was taken down after the 2017 earthquake damaged INAH's state offices, to give administrative staff a place to work, he said, and that created the chance to renew it.

What the new exhibition covers

The exhibition is built around nine thematic "windows" that take visitors through the history and ethnography behind the garden's collection of medicinal plants. A plant mural made from material from the garden greets visitors. A terrace covers the history of Acapantzingo, the museum and the garden's founder, the anthropologist Bernardo Baytelman. Later sections group plants by their uses, look at the challenges facing the holders of traditional knowledge, including their role in public policy, and end with the importance of collective care for public health.

Most of the content comes from four decades of participatory research in Morelos, Guerrero, Puebla, Veracruz and Oaxaca by the program on social actors of medicinal flora in Mexico (PASFMM), said its coordinator and the museum's curator, Paul Hersch Martínez. INAH's national coordinator of museums and exhibitions, Juan Manuel Garibay López, said the exhibition's teaching approach aims at "un museo participativo y dinámico" (a participatory and dynamic museum).

The garden is also being overhauled. INAH says the new exhibition is part of a full restructuring of the Ethnobotanical Garden, now under way and backed by the National Network of Ethnobiological Gardens of the science ministry (Secihti). INAH's visitor directory describes a plot of almost four hectares that holds the national collection of medicinal plants, with hundreds of species, from orchids to xerophytes and plants of low deciduous forest.

Planning a visit

• Address: Matamoros 14, Barrio de Acapantzingo, Cuernavaca, Morelos, postal code 62440.
• Hours and cost: INAH's visitor directory lists 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Sunday, with free entry for Mexican and foreign visitors. The museum's page on INAH's main website, last updated in September 2024, gives Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Before a weekend visit, check by phone on 777 314 4048.
• Rules: no smoking, food, pets or flash photography; professional cameras pay a fee.
• Getting there: from downtown Cuernavaca, INAH gives routes along 16 de Septiembre, along Humboldt and Rufino Tamayo, or along Cuauhtémoc and Avenida Teopanzolco. From the Cuernavaca-Acapulco highway, take the third exit toward Tabachines.

INAH's November program of guided trips also goes to Cuernavaca. On Sunday, November 22, historian Nelly Ramírez Delgado leads a trip on the city as a center of 20th-century modernity, with La Tallera, David Alfaro Siqueiros's workshop, and the Juan Soriano and Cassa Gaia contemporary art museums. Our guide to INAH's November trips explains how to book.

What the travel advice says

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) does not include Morelos among the areas where it advises against all but essential travel, and its regional-risks page has no specific advice for the state. Its Mexico advice was last updated on October 20, 2026, and was still current on October 30. That is not a statement that the state is safe. For the whole country, the FCDO says: "No travel can be guaranteed safe. Read all the advice in this guide."