PARIS.- One of the most important surviving visual records of Mexica migration has arrived in Paris, where the Boturini Codex is now on view at the museum of the Bibliothèque nationale de France through December 13, 2026.

The display places the early 16th-century Indigenous manuscript in an unexpected architectural setting: the Galerie Mazarin, where figures from Greco-Roman mythology look down on images of Huitzilopochtli and the migration of the Mexica people. The encounter brings together two very different visual traditions while marking 200 years of diplomatic relations between Mexico and France.

The exhibition is part of a reciprocal cultural exchange organized by Mexico’s Ministry of Culture, through the National Institute of Anthropology and History, and France’s Ministry of Culture, through the BnF. Just one week earlier, the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City received the Azcatitlan Codex, a manuscript held in France.

The two loans were conceived as a way of bringing major documents of Mexican history before audiences on both sides of the Atlantic while also emphasizing the role of museums and libraries in preserving and interpreting Indigenous heritage.

“Cooperation between Mexico and France makes it possible for two works that are fundamental to our history to encounter audiences on both sides of the Atlantic,” Mexico’s Secretary of Culture, Claudia Curiel de Icaza, said. She noted that both manuscripts are being shown under strict conservation conditions and that the exchange opens new possibilities for institutional collaboration.

The Boturini Codex is also known as the Tira de la Peregrinación, or “Migration Strip,” because it recounts the long journey of the Mexica from Aztlan toward the place where they would eventually establish Tenochtitlan.

According to Baltazar Brito Guadarrama, director of Mexico’s Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia, the histories reflected in the Boturini and Azcatitlan codices reach back to 1064, when various groups began a migration that some sources describe as lasting more than 250 years. In 1325, the Mexica reached the site associated with the sign given by their tutelary god Huitzilopochtli: an eagle standing on a cactus.





That image would ultimately become one of the most enduring symbols of Mexican identity.

For Brito Guadarrama, the importance of the codices lies not only in their historical content, but in the way they continue to function as living bridges between past and present.

“At this moment, the Boturini and Azcatitlan codices serve as a bridge for establishing new and better dialogues,” he said, adding that the exchange can contribute to the preservation, study and dissemination of Mexico’s cultural heritage while also standing as a symbol of friendship between the two nations.

Physically, the Boturini Codex is striking in its simplicity. The manuscript consists of a long strip of amate paper folded into 22 sections. Each measures roughly 19.8 by 25.5 centimeters, and when extended the entire object reaches 5.49 meters.

The imagery is drawn on one side only and contains no color. Its narrative unfolds from left to right through a combination of pictorial scenes and glyphs, recording places, movements and events associated with the Mexica migration.

Its spare visual language gives the work a remarkable immediacy. Rather than functioning as an illustrated text in the European sense, the codex uses images, signs and spatial relationships to construct a chronological account of movement across territory.

The Paris presentation is therefore more than a temporary loan of a rare manuscript. It places a central document of Mexican historical memory within a broader conversation about mobility, identity and the survival of Indigenous knowledge.

The reciprocal display of the Boturini Codex in Paris and the Azcatitlan Codex in Mexico City also underscores the continuing importance of international cultural exchange. For both countries, the project is being framed not only as a commemoration of two centuries of diplomatic relations, but as an opportunity to expand public access to objects that carry deep historical and symbolic meaning.

For Indigenous communities in Mexico, organizers have also emphasized the potential of such exhibitions to reconnect contemporary audiences with ancestral history and memory.

The Boturini Codex will remain on view at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris through December 13, 2026.