AT A GLANCE
Why go?
The Site Museum of the Government Palace invites visitors behind the doors of Jalisco's seat of power—a grand 18th-century baroque building facing Plaza de Armas in the heart of Guadalajara. Guided tours wind through halls where Miguel Hidalgo declared the abolition of slavery in 1810, where Benito Juárez narrowly escaped assassination in 1858, and where José Clemente Orozco's monumental murals still blaze with revolutionary fire.↗↗
The museum opened in 2010 during Mexico's Bicentennial celebrations and was reinaugurated in May 2021 with eight permanent rooms covering the region's precolonial roots, the independence era, the Mexican Revolution, and the palace's own architectural story. Three Orozco murals, a bullet-pocked clock facade, and soaring baroque staircases make this a cultural site unlike any other in Guadalajara's historic center—and entry is completely free.↗↗
A Palace That Made History
The building housing the museum is itself the star exhibit. Construction of the Palacio de Gobierno began in 1750, funded partly by taxes on the clandestine mezcal trade that thrived despite colonial alcohol prohibitions. Master builders Manuel José Conique and Nicolás Enrique del Castillo shaped the façade from golden quarry stone hauled from the Barranca de Huentitán, and the structure was inaugurated in 1790 as the Royal Audiencia of Guadalajara—the seat of colonial justice.
