Codex Azcatitlan Goes on View in Mexico City, as Culture Ministry Continues Centuries-Long Quest for Repatriation

The Azcatitlan Codex, a rare manuscript about Aztec history and civilization, recently went on view at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, as the Mexican Culture Ministry continues its nearly two-century-long quest to have it repatriated.

The illustrated document, created between the late 16th and early 17th centuries, is on loan from the National Library of France (BnF) as part of the celebrations for the bicentennial of diplomatic relationships between France and Mexico, Le Figaro reports. In exchange, the National Museum of Anthropology sent the Boturini Codex to the BnF. Each document will return to the country that currently owns it by the end of the year.

On view until December 6, the manuscript is returning to Mexico for the first time since 1840. Across 20 folios, the codex “combines Mesoamerican pictographic traditions with elements of European writing” and “narrate[s] the Mexica migration from Aztlan to the founding of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the succession of their rulers and the main events of their reigns, as well as the arrival of the Spanish, the conquest, and evangelization,” according to an exhibition description.

“I believe the codex is very important, because although it may be a somewhat late version, it is one that provides various relevant insights into the history of the Aztec people,” Baltazar Brito Guadarrama, director of the National Library of Anthropology and History, told El País.

According to El País, the document changed hands several times over the centuries. Its first owner is believed to be Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, a descendant of the Texcoco ruler Nezahualcóyotl. After his death, it passed to scholar Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, who then donated it to a Jesuit library in Mexico, the holdings of which were then purchased by Lorenzo Boturini in 1737.

Boturini’s collection was seized by the Viceroyalty of New Spain. It was sold in 1830 to Joseph Aubin, who shipped it in 1840 to Paris, where he would ultimately sell it to French Mexican collector Eugène Goupil. Goupil’s widow donated it to the BnF in 1896, two years after her husband’s death.

Given its significance to the history of the Indigenous people of Mexico, the Mexican government believes it is the rightful owner of the document. In 2025, after a state visit by French President Emmanuel Macron, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said a top priority of her government was to repatriate codices in France, which she said at the time, “represent the living memory of Mexico, of our history, the written voice of our ancestors and the deep root of our identity,” per Le Figaro.

The previous year, Mexico had successfully recovered three 16th-century codices, while Spain had returned a codex fragment in 2023. The Mexican government does not plan to claim the Azcatitlan Codex while it is on view in Mexico City.

At the exhibition opening, per El País, Mexican foreign affairs secretary Roberto Velasco said, “Codices do not belong to institutions; they belong to the people and to the generations who recognize themselves in them.”