Museo Frida Kahlo (Casa Azul)

The Museo Frida Kahlo, universally known as La Casa Azul (the Blue House) for its vivid cobalt-blue exterior, is the house in the Coyoacán district of Mexico City where Frida Kahlo was born in 1907, lived for much of her life with husband Diego Rivera, and died in 1954. Built in 1904 in a French colonial style typical of the neighborhood, the house was substantially remodeled by Rivera beginning in 1941, who added a new wing to fully enclose the central courtyard, with further redesign completed by architect Juan O'Gorman in 1946. Rivera donated the house and its contents to the Mexican people in 1957, the year after Kahlo's death, stipulating it become a museum in her honor; it opened to the public in 1958 under the administration of a trust connected to Banco de México. The museum preserves Kahlo's studio, her canopy bed fitted with a ceiling mirror (which allowed her to paint self-portraits while bedridden), her wheelchair, personal clothing including her celebrated Tehuana dresses, and an urn containing her ashes displayed on the upper floor. Beyond Kahlo's own paintings, the house holds works by Rivera, pre-Hispanic artifacts, Mexican folk art (including large papier-mâché Judas figures), and personal correspondence and photographs. Today it is one of the most visited museums in Mexico City and a pilgrimage site for admirers of Kahlo's life and art worldwide, alongside a landmark of Mexican cultural heritage and 20th-century art history.