This building is now part of the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, which produced such scholars as Morelos, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and José Sixto Verduzco. Upstairs, the Sala de Melchor Ocampo is a memorial to another Mexican hero, a reformer-governor of Michoacán (open 8am to 2pm Monday to Friday). Preserved inside is his library and a copy of the document he signed donating it to the college, just before he was executed by a conservative firing squad in 1861.
The enormous, 72-sq-meter mural Paisaje y economía de Michoacán (Landscape and Economy of Michoacán) on the upper floor was painted by in 1935 by Marion Greenwood, the first foreign woman to paint a public mural in Mexico.