MEXICO CITY.- Nearly two centuries after leaving Mexico, the Codex Azcatitlan has returned to the country for a temporary exhibition at the National Museum of Anthropology, where it is being shown as part of celebrations marking 200 years of diplomatic relations between Mexico and France.

The exhibition, The Codex Azcatitlan. Mexico-France, 200 Years of Friendship, opened on September 17 and will remain on view through December 6, 2026. It marks the first time the manuscript has been exhibited in Mexico since it left the country in 1840.

Produced in the Valley of Mexico in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the Codex Azcatitlan is one of the most important surviving manuscripts documenting the history of the Mexica people. Across 20 folios, it combines Mesoamerican pictorial traditions with European writing to recount the migration of the Mexica from Aztlan to the founding of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the reigns of the city’s rulers, and the upheavals that followed the arrival of the Spanish, including the conquest and evangelization.

Its return forms part of a reciprocal cultural exchange between Mexico and France. While the Codex Azcatitlan has traveled from the National Library of France to Mexico City, the Codex Boturini has gone in the opposite direction and is being exhibited in Paris.

The exchange is one of the centerpieces of the “Great Franco-Mexican Festival,” a binational cultural program comprising nearly 200 events organized to commemorate two centuries of relations between the countries.

The initiative began, Mexican Culture Minister Claudia Curiel de Icaza said, with a proposal from the Hñähñu community of Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo, which called for the Codex Azcatitlan to be brought back to Mexico.

The request, she said, placed particular importance on the relationship between Indigenous communities and the cultural heritage through which their histories and identities have been preserved.

The temporary exchange was later agreed upon at the highest levels of both governments in November 2025.

Beyond its diplomatic significance, the exhibition places the codex within a broader history of Indigenous manuscripts and the ways they were created, preserved and interpreted.





Curated by ethnohistorian Baltazar Brito Guadarrama, head of Mexico’s National Library of Anthropology and History, the exhibition surrounds the manuscript with 25 archaeological and ethnographic objects designed to help visitors understand both its physical production and its cultural context.

Brito described the codex as significant not only to Mexican history but also to a much wider tradition in which peoples record and transmit their own histories.

The manuscript, he noted, remains closely connected to contemporary questions of identity, particularly for communities whose understanding of their past continues to draw on these visual and written narratives.

The exhibition is organized around six thematic areas examining pre-Hispanic codex traditions, their continuation during the colonial period, the development of collections, the Codex Azcatitlan itself, founding myths and legendary migrations, and new discoveries and approaches to research.

Among the objects on view are facsimiles of nine pre-Hispanic and colonial manuscripts, providing visitors with a broader sense of the different ways knowledge, history, genealogy, tribute and myth were recorded in Mesoamerica and New Spain.

They include the Codex Bodley, which recounts the exploits of the Mixtec ruler Eight Deer Jaguar Claw; the Codex Boturini, devoted to the legendary migration of the Mexica from Aztlan; the De la Cruz-Badiano Codex, regarded as the first herbal treatise produced in the Americas; and the Codex Mendoza, an important source on Mexica history, customs and systems of tribute.

Archaeological material from the National Museum of Anthropology’s collection further explores how such manuscripts were produced. Objects include stone beaters used in papermaking, a codex-style vessel and projectile points dating from the Late Postclassic period, as well as an anthropomorphic pectoral associated with the Mezcala tradition.

Ethnographic material includes gourds containing natural pigments and a textile from the Hñähñu, or Otomi, culture, extending the exhibition’s examination of artistic materials and Indigenous traditions into the more recent past.

The exhibition is the result of cooperation between Mexico’s Ministry of Culture and the National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, and France’s Ministry of Culture and National Library of France.

Jean-Charles Bédague, director of collections at the National Library of France, noted that the institution holds an exceptional group of Mexican manuscripts that continue to be studied by scholars in both countries.

Their interpretation, he said, depends on the intersection of different disciplines, languages and scholarly traditions. The temporary movement of the two codices across the Atlantic now gives new audiences an opportunity to encounter the manuscripts directly while opening the possibility for further research and collaboration.

Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Roberto Velasco Álvarez described the exchange as an act of trust between the two countries and pointed to possibilities for expanding cooperation through joint research, open-access digitization, exchanges among conservators and the training of specialists.

French Ambassador to Mexico Delphine Borione similarly emphasized the opportunity for audiences in both countries to gain a deeper understanding of the richness and diversity of Mexican history.

For visitors to the National Museum of Anthropology, however, the heart of the exhibition remains the Codex Azcatitlan itself: a manuscript created more than four centuries ago, taken from Mexico in the 19th century and now, for a limited period, returned to the cultural and historical landscape it was created to describe.

The Codex Azcatitlan. Mexico-France, 200 Years of Friendship is on view at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City through December 6, 2026. Admission to the exhibition is free.