Mexico City - Leon Trotsky Museum

At the corner of Calles Viena and Morelos stands the Leon Trotsky Museum. In this house, which he had converted into a veritable fortress, Trotsky lived in exile until he was murdered with an ice-pick on August 20th 1940 by Ramón Mercader, an agent of Joseph Stalin. Today visitors are guided through the rooms by members of the Trotskyite Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (Workers' Revolutionary Party). Trotsky's study is just as it was on the day he was killed, with his broken spectacles still lying on the desk.

The walls of the simply-furnished bedroom show bullet-holes from an earlier attack by Stalinists in which the painter David Àlfaro Siqueiros was involved. There is a tablet by the entrance in memory of Trotsky's bodyguard, Robert Sheldon Hart, who was also shot. The great revolutionary and his wife are buried in the garden (tomb by Juan O'Gorman).