Coyoacan & Frida Kahlo

The cobalt-blue house in Coyoacan where Frida Kahlo was born in 1907, lived with Diego Rivera, and died in 1954. The house preserves their personal objects — Frida's wheelchair at her easel, her plaster corsets decorated with painted flowers, the mirror above her bed where she painted self-portraits during recovery from her devastating 1925 bus accident. The kitchen with its collection of Mexican folk pottery, the garden with pre-Columbian sculptures, and the studio feel as if the artists just stepped out. Leon Trotsky lived nearby (his separate museum is blocks away) after Frida and Diego helped him flee Stalin.

Book tickets online at least a week ahead — this is Mexico City's most-visited museum and daily entries are capped. The Trotsky Museum two blocks away is far less crowded and equally fascinating.

The fortified house in Coyoacan where Leon Trotsky lived in exile from 1939 until his assassination on August 20, 1940. Ramon Mercader, a Soviet agent, killed him with an ice axe to the head in the study — the desk where it happened is preserved with Trotsky's personal effects. The house has watchtowers and bullet-pocked walls from a prior machine-gun attack led by muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. Trotsky's tomb is in the garden. He had come to Mexico at the invitation of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, who later had a brief affair with Trotsky, causing a rift with Rivera.

The museum is just a few blocks from the Frida Kahlo museum — combine both in a Coyoacan morning. The bullet holes from Siqueiros's attack are still visible in the bedroom walls.