The Man of Fire
The famous dome mural.
Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata — CC BY-SA 4.0 · No machine-readable author provided. Patrick.denizet~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). — CC BY-SA 2.5 · ProtoplasmaKid — CC BY-SA 4.0 · SergioYalu — CC BY-SA 4.0 · ProtoplasmaKid — CC BY-SA 4.0
One of the oldest and largest orphanage and hospital complexes in the Americas, founded by the Bishop of Guadalajara in 1810 as a home for orphans, the elderly and the sick together, and designed by the architect Manuel Tolsá in neoclassical style. Today it is a museum and cultural centre, on UNESCO's list since 1997. The building is a vast single-storey rectangle around many tree-planted courtyards, with a chapel in the middle whose dome rises thirty-two metres. It remained an orphanage until the 1980s. Its treasure is the giant murals by the Mexican painter José Clemente Orozco, painted in the late 1930s on the walls, ceiling and dome of the main hall, counted among the masterpieces of 20th-century mural art. The best known is «The Man of Fire» in the dome, a man consumed by flames as a symbol of the human spirit. The hall has long benches where visitors lie back to gaze at the ceiling. The museum is closed on Mondays and free on Tuesdays. It stands at the end of the long pedestrian promenade that starts at the cathedral, so it combines well with a walk through the centre.
The famous dome mural.
Trees and stone arcades.
Lie back and look up.
Calle Cabañas 8, eastern end of Guadalajara's historic centre
On Tuesdays; the museum is closed on Mondays. On other days general admission is 160 pesos.