Fodor's Expert Review Gran Museo del Mundo Maya

Whether or not the "Grand Museum of the Mayan World" lives up to its lofty name depends on your tastes and expectations, but the institution certainly makes a big architectural splash. The starkly modern building was designed to resemble a giant ceiba tree, sacred to the Maya, and it looms over the northern outskirts of town on the highway to Progreso. (Plan on a MX$50 Uber or DiDi ride from downtown.)

The museum showcases an amazing collection of 1,100 Maya artifacts previously housed at the Palacio Cantón, where there was limited room for displays. Here, exhibitions wind through four themed halls: The Mayab, Nature, and Culture; Ancestral Maya; Yesterday's Maya; and Today's Maya. Much of the exhibit space is given over to multimedia presentations, and therein lies the problem for some museum purists. The interactive screens are enormously popular, especially with younger visitors. (One all-the-rage panel of screens lets you tap in your birth date, convert it to the corresponding date on the Maya calendar, and email yourself your Maya horoscope.) Museum officials have responded to criticisms about the inclusion of modern technology by saying that Maya culture isn't merely an artifact of the past but an evolving way of life that has adapted to modern times. So why not adapt a museum's teaching methods to modernity, too?

Everything here—artifact labeling and multimedia narration—is trilingual (Spanish, English, and Mayan). An adjoining theater, named the Mayamax, screens films and there is a concert hall too.