Restorers find original wall decoration under later layers at Chihuahua's Quinta Luz museum

Conservators working on the painted walls of the Museo Histórico de la Revolución in Chihuahua, the house known as Quinta Luz, have found part of its original decoration beneath later coats of finish, Mexico's culture ministry said on November 10. The project is run by CENCROPAM, the conservation center of the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL), and covers 126 square meters of decorative painting in two rooms: the Salón de Música, or music room, and the Pinacoteca de los Héroes, which holds a collection of history paintings. The building belongs to Mexico's defense ministry, the Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional.

The walls show layers coming apart, cracks, loose and shifting plaster and patches where the paint has gone. A diagnosis in October 2025 ranked the areas by how badly they had deteriorated. That December, about a square meter of paint and plaster on the west side of the music room was at risk of coming away, and restorers covered it with a protective facing. The stage that began on October 13, 2026 starts from that spot, extends to other areas that need stabilizing and is due to finish on December 13.

What the restorers found

The music room has about 78 square meters of decorative painting and skirting. Under finishes that had lifted and lost their grip, the team found part of the original decoration, and with it differences in the colors, highlights and shading of the ornamental motifs, according to the ministry. José Caballero Rosas, a CENCROPAM specialist, said that studying how the decoration was made revealed the motifs' original character and steered the restoration, and that analyzing the color differences let the team make adjustments for a more harmonious whole.

The later coatings are not being removed across the board, because stripping them could cause further losses. Instead the restorers opened small exploratory windows, known as calas, and recorded what they found in photographs and samples. For now they are stabilizing the visible surfaces that most need it, through cleaning, consolidation, filling and color reintegration. The ministry says the records will allow the hidden decoration to be studied in later stages. The Pinacoteca de los Héroes, with its paintings and decorated surfaces, will be added to the program in the coming weeks.

A museum that began in Luz Corral's home

Quinta Luz was where Luz Corral lived, and she gave over several of its rooms to displaying personal belongings of General Francisco Villa. The house became the Museo Histórico de la Revolución, which opened in 1982 and keeps records of the revolutionary leader's life and of Mexican history, the ministry says.

Villa himself came from our home state. When the culture ministry marked the 145th anniversary of his birth in 2023, it gave his birth as June 5, 1878, in La Coyotada, in the municipality of San Juan del Río, Durango, under the name Doroteo Arango Arámbula, and the date of his death as July 20, 1923. Durango city has its own Museo Francisco Villa, which appears in our Durango city guide.

Visiting during the work

The ministry's release does not say whether the two rooms, or the museum as a whole, stay open while the restoration goes on, and it locates the museum only as “en Chihuahua” (in Chihuahua), a name shared by the state and the city of Chihuahua. For the state, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) “advises against all but essential travel to the state of Chihuahua”, with six exceptions that include “the city of Chihuahua” and “the Copper Canyon rail route to and from Chihuahua and towns immediately on this route including Creel”; the same page links a more detailed map. The FCDO's Mexico advice was last updated on October 20, 2026.