Leon Trotsky House Museum

“Revolution is impossible
until it’s inevitable.”
—Trotsky

The Leon Trotsky House Museum was the setting for one of the 20th century’s most controversial murders. Withing these very walls León Trotsky and his wife Natalia Sedova spent their final years. A refuge during a chaotic era of contemporary history, to visit today is to re-examine one of history’s most fascinating revolutionary characters.

Critical of the Stalin regime, Trotsky went into exile from the Soviet Union in 1929. He and his wife spent some years moving from country to country: Turkey, France, Norway, and some other European countries. With help from Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, the couple arrived in Mexico City in 1937.

For a short time they lived at the Casa Azul. Today a museum too, the Blue House was the Kahlo family home in the same Coyoacán neighborhood. The Trotskys stayed there until Trotsky and Diego suffered a misunderstanding in 1939. It was then that the Trotskys moved to a house in the same neighborhood. This very house is today a fascinating  museum, and a tribute to the man murdered within it.

Created in 1990, it had been 50 years since the the Spanish Stalinist, Ramón Mercader ended Trotsky’s life. Legend has it that Mercader struck Trotsky from behind with a pick-axe. Museologists, historians, and specialists recreated the precise room where the event took place. The position of the chair, the papers on the table, and the library are all as they were. The house is preserved as it was when they lived there. The guard’s house is today an exhibit hall. A stone stele, designed by Juan O’Gorman, contains Trotsky’s ashes.

Among the most visited museums by international visitors, the museum also hosts nearly 50,000 young people every year. The Leon Trotsky museum is quite near to the Cineteca Nacional and just a few blocks away from the always popular Frida Kahlo Museum. Visiting the museum is  a chance to take in the Coyoacán Market, and many charming streets on the way there, too.