Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo Tickets

Two boxy houses, one painted a deep terracotta red, the other a smaller blue, stand joined by a bridge across their rooftops in the San Angel district. The architect Juan O'Gorman built them in the early 1930s for Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and they count among the first functionalist buildings in Latin America: exposed concrete, tall industrial windows, and a fence made of organ-pipe cactus. Rivera kept his studio in the red house, Frida had the blue one, and today the pair is an INBAL museum about how the couple lived and worked.

What will you see at the Casa Estudio?

The reason to come is the architecture and Diego's studio: O'Gorman's twin functionalist houses, the rooftop bridge that links them, and the big north-lit workroom where Rivera painted, kept with his easels, brushes and the papier-mache Judas figures he collected.

The red house holds the double-height studio, its wall of glass throwing even light across the room, with the giant cardboard Judas figures looming in a corner much as they did in his lifetime. A narrow walkway crosses the rooftops to Frida's smaller blue house, the detail everyone remembers from photographs of the place.

Around the studios sit period furniture, photographs of the couple, and the clean modernist lines that made the building famous when almost nothing else in Mexico looked like it. Rotating shows fill out the rooms with material on Rivera, Kahlo and Mexican modernism, and the spiky cactus fence still rings the plot outside.

How much is admission?

Admission is small, around 45 MXN (about $2.25). Entry is free on Sundays for Mexican nationals and residents who show ID; foreign visitors pay the standard fee on any day, including Sunday.

This is a compact, architecture-first visit rather than a big painting collection, which is part of the appeal: the ticket is cheap and the rooms are usually quiet. The official INBAL page lists the current hours and price, worth a quick check before you make the trip out to San Angel.

When is it open and how do you get there?

The museum opens Tuesday to Sunday and closes on Mondays. It stands at the corner of Diego Rivera and Altavista streets in San Angel, a cobbled southern neighborhood, and the easiest approach is Metrobus Line 1 or a taxi from the Barranca del Muerto Metro.

San Angel is worth a wander in its own right, especially on Saturdays when the Bazaar Sabado art market fills the nearby plaza. The houses take only about forty-five minutes to an hour to see, so most people fold the visit into a slower afternoon around the district's squares and colonial streets.

What pairs with the Casa Estudio nearby?

The couple's other homes are a short trip away, and the two in Coyoacan share one ticket.

The Frida Kahlo Museum, her cobalt-blue Casa Azul in Coyoacan, is the headline stop, with timed tickets that sell out weeks ahead. That ticket also covers Museo Anahuacalli, Diego Rivera's volcanic-stone museum of pre-Hispanic art, at no extra cost.

For more of their paintings, the reopened Museo Dolores Olmedo in Xochimilco gathers over a hundred works by the two artists in a hacienda setting with gardens.

Questions people ask