Templo y Ex Convento de San Francisco / Museo Regional de Querétaro

The Museo Regional de Querétaro occupies the former Templo y Ex Convento de San Francisco, a 17th-century monastery complex fronting Jardín Zenea in the historic center. Visitors walk through the restored cloister, with its arched colonnades and central garden, to view exhibits spanning pre-Hispanic archaeology, colonial-era religious art, and rooms dedicated to the drafting of the 1917 Mexican Constitution, since Querétaro was the constitutional capital. Highlights include the table on which the Constitution was reportedly signed, viceregal-period paintings, and an ethnographic section on the indigenous Otomi and Chichimeca peoples of the region. A full visit runs 1.5-2 hours, moving through the ground-floor cloister galleries and upstairs exhibition rooms. The museum is least crowded on weekday mid-mornings; Sundays draw larger local crowds since admission is free for Mexican nationals that day, while foreign visitors pay a standard fee any day of the week.