Museo Casa de León Trotsky

The Museo Casa de León Trotsky, located in Mexico City’s Coyoacán district, preserves the residence where Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova, lived during their exile. The museum offers insights into Trotsky’s life and the political history of the era, featuring permanent and temporary exhibitions, a library, and an auditorium. Visitors can explore the garden, view personal artifacts, and learn about Trotsky’s assassination within the house. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

Planning your visit

Trotsky's house in Coyoacán is preserved as it was on the day he was attacked, and that fact governs the visit. Exiled from the Soviet Union and pursued by Stalin's agents, he arrived in Mexico in 1937 — initially staying with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo a few streets away — and moved here in 1939 after the relationship soured. The house was fortified after a first assassination attempt in May 1940, when a group led by the painter David Alfaro Siqueiros fired machine guns into the bedroom; the bullet holes remain in the walls. In August the same year Ramón Mercader, who had befriended Trotsky's circle, killed him with an ice axe in the study.

The study is kept as it was, with his papers and glasses on the desk. The garden holds his tomb, marked with a hammer and sickle, and the rabbit hutches he kept. The watchtowers and steel doors from the fortification are still in place.

It is small, taking under an hour, and quiet compared with the Frida Kahlo museum nearby.

Bookable options include guided tours led by professors or historians, which suit material this politically dense, and combined tours of the Coyoacán district covering both Trotsky's house and Casa Azul — two exiles and their intersecting circles within a few streets. Current availability is shown below.