This little blue house was the birthplace of the painter Frida Kahlo (1907-54), who was confined to a wheelchair and lived here with her husband Diego Rivera from 1929 until her death. The rooms have been left just as they were during her lifetime. Leon Trotsky stayed in the house as a guest after his arrival in Mexico in 1937. In addition to personal mementoes and works by Frida and her husband the museum contains pictures and sculptures by 18th and 19th c. Mexican artists, as well as pre-Columbian objects and examples of Mexican folk-art from Frida Kahlo’s private collection.
Leon Trotsky Museum. In this house, which he had converted into a veritable fortress, Trotsky lived in exile until he was murdered with an ice-pick on August 20th 1940 by Ramón Mercader, an agent of Joseph Stalin. Today visitors are guided through the rooms by members of the Trotskyite Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (Workers’ Revolutionary Party). Trotsky’s study is just as it was on the day he was killed, with his broken spectacles still lying on the desk. The walls of the simply-furnished bedroom show bullet-holes from an earlier attack by Stalinists in which the painter David Àlfaro Siqueiros was involved. There is a tablet by the entrance in memory of Trotsky’s bodyguard, Robert Sheldon Hart, who was also shot. The great revolutionary and his wife are buried in the garden (tomb by Juan O’Gorman).
