Frida Kahlo Museum (Casa Azul)

Book first, or you don’t get in

The single thing to understand about the Frida Kahlo Museum is that the box office is gone. La Casa Azul — the cobalt-walled house in Coyoacán where Kahlo was born, lived with Diego Rivera, and died — sells tickets online only, on 30-minute timed slots, and it routinely sells out three to four weeks ahead. Over Día de Muertos at the start of November, Easter and the summer, push that to six to eight weeks. Turning up on the day to a sold-out house is the classic Mexico City mistake.

Book on museofridakahlo.org.mx before you fly. General admission is MX$320 (about £14) plus a small service charge; Mexican residents, students, seniors and children 6–12 pay less, under-6s are free, and mobile-phone photography without flash is included in the price. Your slot is an entry window, not the length of your visit, so arrive 10–15 minutes early.

What you’re actually seeing

Go in knowing this is a house, not a gallery. There are only a handful of Kahlo’s own paintings on the walls. The reason to come is the rooms themselves — her studio with the wheelchair pulled up to the easel, the four-poster bed with the mirror fixed overhead that she painted her self-portraits from while bedridden, the bright kitchen, and the courtyard garden with its pyramid. It is a biography you walk through. Allow an hour to ninety minutes; the house is small and you can read every label and still be out inside ninety.

Getting there, and is it worth it?

The Blue House is in Coyoacán, well south of the centre. Take Metro Line 3 to Coyoacán station (about a 20-minute walk) or Line 2 to General Anaya (slightly closer); an Uber from Centro Histórico runs roughly 30–40 minutes depending on traffic. Don’t treat it as a quick in-and-out — Coyoacán’s leafy plazas, the church and the market are part of the day.

Worth it, with the right expectation. If you arrive hoping for a wall of famous canvases you’ll feel short-changed; if you come to stand where Kahlo worked, it lands. Pair it with a wander round Coyoacán rather than racing back into the traffic, and book the ticket the moment your dates are firm.