30 May 2025 / 10 House
Article suitable for Top Juniors and above
Find out moreWhere are the codices today?
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - James Vega: Just wondering if you knew the names of the locations/museums (eg Vatican) of the 13 - 20 Mexican Codices... and items that are from Mexico: example - where in Vienna is Moctezuma’s original headpiece etc... Thanks in advance. (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
Well, here’s a list of the locations today of some of the best known codices from Mexico: most of them date from pre-Columbian times and are now in European museums...
• Tonalámatl Aubin - Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City
• Codex Bodley - Bodleian Library, Oxford, England
• Codex Borbonicus - Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
• Codex Borgia - Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome
• Codex Boturini - Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City
• Codex Colombino - Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City
• Codex Cospi - Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, Italy
• Codex Dresden (Maya) - Sächsische Landesbibliothek — Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, Germany
• Codex Fejérváry-Mayer - World Museum Liverpool, England
• Codex Laud - Bodleian Library, Oxford, England
• Codex Madrid (Maya) - Museo de América, Madrid, Spain
• Codex Magliabecchiano - Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, Italy
• Codex Mendoza - Bodleian Library, Oxford, England
• Codex Zouche-Nuttall - British Museum, London
• Codex Paris (Maya) - Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
• Florentine Codex - Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, Italy
• Codex Selden - Bodleian Library, Oxford, England
• Codex Vindobonensis - Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Austria
As for the famous ‘headdress of Moctezuma’ (actually there are serious doubts as to whether it DID actually belong to Moctezuma II), it now resides in the Museum of Ethnololgy in Vienna (follow link below for more information). When we’ve time (!) we hope to add on our site a list of the key collections of Aztec/Mexica artefacts around the world...
Photos -
• Codex Durán by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Moctezuma headdress courtesy Museum of Ethnology (Museum für Völkerkunde), Vienna, Austria
Comments (1)
tecpaocelotl
30th Oct 2011
Great list. I always wondered where most of them are. I did make a list of links to see most of these codices online -
http://tecpaocelotl.webs.com/Books.html
Mexicolore
Thanks, Tecpa. Yours is an excellent list too, featuring some great resources.
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