Love affair with

tote bags. For all the love and acclaim she has received in death, her life was one of pain and turmoil. She contracted polio aged five which left one leg longer than the other (hence her trademark full-length skirts) and suffered horrifically at the age of 18 when a tram crash left her unable to have children.

Bedridden for months, it was during this time that she began painting self-portraits using a mirror suspended above her four-poster bed, which can be seen in Casa Azul. The rest of her life was spent in painful back braces before she developed gangrene and had a leg amputated. “What do I need feet for if I have wings to fly?”, she said.

Then there was Diego Rivera. A living legend, the famed muralist and notorious womaniser 20 years her senior caused Frida, by her own admission, more pain than anything she endured physically.

They met at the Colegio de San Ildefonso, a former school turned cultural centre located a short walk from the zocalo, when Frida was a young and impressionable budding artist who asked the master muralist to critique her work.

“That encounter sparked the beginning of a toxic love affair that would consume her entire life,” said guide Fernando as we strolled through the stone archways centred around a courtyard of magnolia trees and neatly trimmed clove bushes.

The pair married and divorced (and later remarried). “It’s thought he had an affair a day,” added Fernando. “He must’ve been incredibly charismatic because he was as ugly as sin.”

Perhaps it was his artistic prowess that lured women (including Frida’s sister) into bed. Fernando and I admired some of his murals but, truth be told, I much preferred the work by his peer, José Clemente Orozco, that was also on show.

Outside, the surrounding streets were beginning to throb with shoppers browsing the wares on offer from the street market. Fashionistas deliberated over baby pink ballgowns and Minnie Mouse nighties while office workers feasted on streetside nopal cacti tacos.

From there, and just like Frida had on so many occasions, I travelled south to the quiet suburb of Coyoacan. Meaning “place of the coyotes”, it is now one of the city’s most desirable districts with leafy avenues, alfresco cafes and charming parks.

Frida has put Coyoacan on the map as the long queues outside Casa Azul testify (waits of up to three hours are not uncommon so