Michoacán is a state with an impressive history and cultural wealth. For the same reason, at the beginning of republican life, the need arises to have spaces that would protect and display those riches.
Among the drivers to form a museum, back in 1853, stands out Melchor Ocampo who would donate his collections of natural history and a select batch of books on the same subject. Finally, in 1886 the Michoacano Museum was founded in the Colegio de San Nicolás and since 1915, it has been housed in a stately residence, a delight for lovers of colonial architecture.
The house of Morelos, with a long tradition and full of intense evocations of its owner and builder, it functioned informally until 1910 when the Federal Government acquired it to be used, a year later, as a public museum. In this house, which keeps its original appearance, the stones do not hear, as in the work of Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, but rather speak and transmit the thought of the Servant of the Nation.
Already in the third decade of the almost extinct century, the Museum of Popular Art and Industries in Pátzcuaro that preserves and displays true jewels from artisan hands.
The second half of the 20th century was lavish in this regard. To name a few: in Morelia are the State Museum that, housed in two 18th century mansions, offers a vision of Michoacan past and present with its regional contrasts; the Morelos Birthplace and the Ocampo room, of singular attractiveness. For aesthetic enjoyment there are the Museum of Colonial Art and the Alfredo Zalce Museum of Contemporary Art; and for the affections to the popular art, the one of Handicrafts and the one of the Mask.
The collections of Natural History that the Michoacan Museum In the beginning, after wandering through various places, they were rescued to form the current Museum of Natural History. His visit leads to know the Geology and Mineralogy, and the Orquidario de Morelia.
On the way to Pátzcuaro, it is worth knowing the Agrarian Museum of Tzurumútaro and the site of the archaeological zone of Tzintzuntzan. A few minutes from the city of the lake, there is El Cobre in Santa Clara and already heading to warmer lands, the Museum of the First Supreme Court of Justice in Ario de Rosales, located in the same house where the insurgents installed the Judicial Power, and the community museum of Tacámbaro.
On the way to Uruapan, Tingambato has its museum and in the Pearl of Cupatitzio you have to know the so-called Eduardo Ruiz.
Following the Tepalcatepec region, in Nueva Italia there is a community one; others of the same type are found in Apatzingán. On the coast, in the municipality of Aquila, the population of Cololá has integrated yet another.
In the Balsas area, Carácuaro has a museum space with a theme that recalls Morelos. By the route that goes to Salvatierra, Guanajuato, in the former convent of Cuitzeo There are rooms that exhibit various objects, and in Tlalpujahua, already in the east, there is the House of the Rayón Brothers.
As the reader will be able to verify, cities like Morelia and Pátzcuaro are in themselves dynamic and living museums. But it is Michoacán in its entirety, the one that offers in the spaces expressly destined to show our habitat and our culture an endless number of events and pleasant surprises.
