“Frida Kahlo used to be known as the wife of [artist] Diego Rivera but now the opposite is true – she’s Mexico’s most well-known artist and perhaps even the most well-known Mexican,” says tour guide Pato.
We are standing opposite Museo Frida Kahlo, otherwise known as Caza Azul, the striking cobalt-blue building where she was born and spent most of her life. Today, queues of tourists snake around the corner and pose for pictures outside.
In Mexico City, Frida Kahlo is omnipresent – her distinctive face, with her strong unibrow and ribbon-braided hair, is featured on the 500-peso bank note, and etched on paintings and prints at market stalls. Her art is dotted around galleries and museums across the city.
And Kahlo’s work is now crossing the Atlantic with the Frida: The Making of an Icon exhibition at Tate Modern. The show features more than 30 of her pieces. Ahead of its opening on Thursday, it had the highest pre-sales for an exhibition in the art museum’s history.
But for a deeper look into the artist who was known for her self-portraits, her intimate portal of her ongoing physical pain (she experienced polio as a child and later was left severely injured after a near-fatal bus accident), and her bold style, there’s an alternative in her hometown that doesn’t have an end date.
The colourful neighbourhood of Coyoacán, around 45 minutes by public transport from the city’s historic centre, is where Kahlo spent most of her life.
Casa Azul is the neighbourhood’s tourist hotspot (Photo: Getty)I begin tracing her footsteps in Casa Azul (general admission around £14; should be booked well in advance). Alongside a tightly time-controlled crowd, I see where Kahlo lived for 36 of her 47 years, first with her family and then with her husband, Diego. Among the rooms – such as the bright, rustic Mexican kitchen with blue, yellow, and white tiles and terracotta clay pots – there are self-portraits, family photographs, books, her traditional colourful Tehuana dresses, and furnishings including the four-poster bed and the mirror Kahlo’s mother had installed after the accident, and which encouraged her to paint self-portraits.
Next, for an overview of the neighbourhood, I join a free walking tour, “Frida Kahlo, Markets & Urban Art” (freetour.com; donation encouraged) of Coyoacán, where guide Paco also lives.
“Coyoacán has an artistic vibe and is still a wealthy neighbourhood,” he says, as we wander the colourful and bohemian area with cobbled stones and women selling vibrant handmade textiles on the sides of streets.
We pass the red Old Coyoacán Town Hall, where crowds congregate for weddings, and Jardín Centenario, a park known for its fountain featuring two bronze coyote sculptures. I learn that the name Coyoacán comes from Nahuatl, a local indigenous language, and means “place of the coyotes” – there are tiny coyotes above the neighbourhood’s street signs.
The tour weaves through Mercado de Coyoacán, a buzzy indoor market selling textiles, Mexican spices, tacos, fruit and vegetables, and stops at landmarks such as the Frida Kahlo Park, where there are sculptures of Kahlo and Rivera.
The colourful, leafy neighbourhood is a wealthy part of the city (Photo: Kanel Bulle/Getty)I check-in into Mansion de Papilio, a sage-coloured, French-style hotel just minutes from the market. The eight-bedroom property has a romantic feel exemplified by a private six-course dining experience with our own pianist. I carry on my night of music by heading to jazz club Nola to watch a four-piece band and drink mezcalitas in a darkly-lit room among a crowd of locals.
After an alfresco breakfast in Mansion de Papilio’s walled garden, where there is a soundtrack of fountains, I visit Museo Casa Kahlo, otherwise known as Casa Roja or Red House, a tawny-coloured building that has belonged to the Kahlo family for generations and opened to the public in September 2025. I take a tour (standard entry from around £11.65) with Armando, a cheery guide.
“We offer an intimate perspective of Frida as a person,” he says. “To get to the artist we have to understand the family as well.”
The museum documents Kahlo’s relationship with her parents and her nieces, with letters and postcards presented around the house, and displays Mexican folklore clothes such as a huipil, a tunic-style blouse featuring flowers and leaves, and her statement jewellery of large silver and gold rings.
The Leon Trotsky House Museum, (entry around £2.90) is another stop on my Kahlo tour. It offers a fascinating account of the life of the exiled revolutionary leader who fled to Mexico City and was later assassinated in the house. There’s a cluttered desk of well-thumbed books and a fortified garden with high walls. Trotsky was a friend of Kahlo (they also had an affair) and Rivera and lived with the couple from 1937–39.
Not in the neighbourhood, but nearby in San Angel (a one-hour walk away, or 20 minutes by taxi) lies Museo Estudio Diego Rivera (entry around £2.10), a modern studio and the former home of Kahlo and Rivera.
I join a tour to find out more about the bold-coloured and futuristic buildings, including a house painted in cobalt blue that is connected by a bridge to Rivera’s studio. The building was designed by Mexican architect Juan O’Gorman in 1932. Surrounded by rows of cacti, it contains artefacts and artwork Rivera collected, such as large papier-mâché skeletal figures and handmade natural pigments made from crushed seeds, as well as photographs of Kahlo.
The studios of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, now museums, are in the old San Angel neighborhood (Photo: abalcazar/Getty)Kahlo was known to love Mexican food, regularly hosting dinner parties for friends and family. She also used food as a subject in her work, for example in her painting of sliced and whole watermelons, Viva la Vida, which was painted just eight days before she died.
As such, I want to try out her favourite dishes. I join a Mexican vegan cooking class at the sun-filled Aura Cocina, where I make tortilla soup, tamales (a reported staple at Casa Azul gatherings) filled with vegetables and topped with a spearmint sauce, vegan Taco al Pastor with mango and chile manzano sauce and avocado mousse with coconut milk. The vibrant meal, served in blue and white crockery on a purple-and-green patterned tablecloth, looks like it could be a colourful feast served up at Kahlo’s former home.
On a Saturday afternoon, the earthy smell of fresh corn tortillas hits me again as I wander through Coyoacán. Arty market stalls seem to overflow with paintings and pictures and older people dance to salsa and bachata in public squares. I head to the cosy and rustic Ecosentli, a restaurant serving traditional Mexican food such as hand-pressed tortillas and tlacoyos – a torpedo-shaped mana snack stuffed with beans served up on terracotta clay plates.
Back in Casa Roya, Armando points to a piece of embroidery of a house and tree, which Kahlo made at just five year’s old, before showing us a family photograph featuring the artist wearing a suit – an unusual style in Mexico at the time. “This shows her exploring her identity,” he says.
My time in bohemian Coyoacán has helped me to understand Kahlo as an active socialist and feminist, and a supporter of indigenous Mexican culture. This neighbourhood that some tourists overlook gave me real insight into the artist’s life.
Getting there
Aeromexico, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic offer direct flights from Heathrow to Mexico City. A return ticket starts from around £600.
Staying there
Mansion de Papilio has rooms from MXN$6500 per night.
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