Museo Soumaya Mexico City: Collection, Buildings and Visiting Tips
Museo Soumaya holds over 66,000 works, including a large Rodin collection, in Nuevo Polanco and San Ángel. How to get there, what to see and nearby stops.
Museo Soumaya is a private, non-profit art museum in Mexico City with more than 66,000 works, best known for its curved, aluminum-clad building on Plaza Carso in Nuevo Polanco. It has a second building at Plaza Loreto in San Ángel. People go for the collection of European masters, the large group of Auguste Rodin sculptures, and the architecture itself.
Opening hours and admission prices change, so check the museum’s own website, museosoumaya.org, before you go.
Who runs Museo Soumaya and where it is
Businessman Carlos Slim founded the museum, and the Carlos Slim Foundation owns it. It is named after his wife, Soumaya Domit, who died in 1999 and was an admirer of Rodin. Alfonso Miranda is the director, according to Wikipedia’s entry on Museo Soumaya.
The institution has two museum buildings in the city. Plaza Loreto, in San Ángel in the south, opened in 1994. Plaza Carso, in the Nuevo Polanco district in the north, opened in 2011 and now houses the main collection. According to the Mexico City tourism office, the institute also manages a house museum in colonia Roma dedicated to the collection of Guillermo Tovar de Teresa.
What is in the collection
The works span 30 centuries of art. Most are European pieces from the 15th to the 20th centuries, alongside sculptures from Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, Mexican art of the 19th and 20th centuries, religious relics, historical documents and coins. Wikipedia describes the museum’s holding of pre-Hispanic and colonial era coins as the largest in the world.
Rodin is the biggest draw. The museum has the largest collection of casts of his sculptures outside France, and Slim owns a total of 380 casts and works by the French sculptor. Other European artists on display include Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Joan Miró, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, El Greco, Camille Claudel, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo and Tintoretto, as well as works from the circle of Leonardo da Vinci. Mexican painters Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo are also represented.
The museum shows some kinds of European art that had not been on permanent display in Latin America before. If you want to compare it with other collections in the city, see our guide to the best art museums in Mexico City.
The Plaza Carso building
Architect Fernando Romero, Slim’s son-in-law, designed the Plaza Carso building with his practice, fr·ee, and it was engineered with Ove Arup and Frank Gehry. It was officially inaugurated on Feb. 28, 2011. The six-story building is 46 meters tall and covered by 16,000 hexagonal aluminum tiles, and each floor has a different shape.
Inside, a narrow entrance leads into a large white gallery. The top floor is open to daylight. Besides the galleries, the building has a library, a restaurant and a 350-seat auditorium. The floors are marble imported from Greece.
The Plaza Loreto building in San Ángel
The first building stands near the Magdalena river on land with a long industrial past. A wheat watermill on the site was later turned into a paper mill, and in 1906 Alberto Lenz converted it into the Fábrica de Papel de Loreto y Peña Pobre, which gave the plaza its name. After a fire in the 1980s, Grupo Carso redeveloped the ruins, and the museum was founded there in 1994. ICOMOS gave it heritage recognition in 1996.
Getting there
The main building sits next to other attractions. According to the tourism office, visitors often combine it with the nearby Museo Jumex, the Acuario Inbursa aquarium and the Plaza Carso shopping center. The Turibus Circuito Polanco stop is in front of the aquarium on Avenida Ferrocarril de Cuernavaca.
The closest Metro stations are Polanco and San Joaquín, but Wikipedia notes that both are some distance away, so plan for a walk or a taxi from either one.
Tips for visiting
- Confirm hours and admission on museosoumaya.org before your visit.
- Head to Plaza Carso for the main collection and the Rodin sculptures; Plaza Loreto in San Ángel is a separate trip in the south of the city.
- Leave time for Museo Jumex and Acuario Inbursa, which are a short walk away.
- Go up to the top floor during the day, when sunlight comes in.
For other big museums worth a day, see our pages on the National Museum of Anthropology and Chapultepec Castle.
Quick answers
How big is the Museo Soumaya collection?
It has more than 66,000 works covering 30 centuries of art, from Pre-Hispanic sculpture to modern European masters.
How many people visit Museo Soumaya?
Wikipedia reports 1,095,000 visitors in 2013, which made it the most visited art museum in Mexico that year. It welcomed its five millionth visitor in October 2015.
Which Soumaya building should I visit?
Plaza Carso in Nuevo Polanco holds the main collection since 2011. Plaza Loreto in San Ángel is the original building from 1994.
Is Museo Soumaya free?
Check current admission on the museum’s website, museosoumaya.org, before you go.
Checked against official sources in November 2026. Hours, prices and rules change: confirm on the official page before you go or apply.
