La Esquina, Museo del Juguete Popular Mexicano

La Esquina, Museo del Juguete Popular Mexicano, showcases over 3,500 traditional Mexican toys, highlighting the country’s rich cultural heritage.

Planning your visit

La Esquina holds over 3,500 traditional Mexican toys, and the collection makes an argument: that the juguete popular is folk art of the same order as pottery or textiles, made by artisans in regional traditions, and that it has been largely displaced by industrial manufacture within living memory.

The toys are organised by material and region — painted wood, tin, papier-mâché, clay, cloth, palm — and cover the objects of Mexican childhood: lotería boards, trompos and baleros, miniature kitchens and market stalls, Judas figures, alebrijes, and the skeletal toys made for Day of the Dead, in which death is domesticated and made playful.

That last category is the one most visitors find revealing about Mexican attitudes to mortality.

The museum runs workshops and educational programmes, and works particularly well with children.

San Miguel de Allende is a UNESCO-listed colonial town and a substantial arts centre. Allow an hour. The main booking is an entry ticket. Current availability is listed below.