After years of dreaming, I finally got the chance to visit the places Frida Kahlo called home throughout her turbulent life. Her family home, La Casa Azul, is located in Coyoacan, a cheerful suburb in Mexico City, where bougainvillea drapes its magenta blossoms over colorfully painted walls.

It’s a private, artful residence with an open floor plan and a cobalt exterior. Traditional handicrafts fill each room, and sculptures adorn the courtyard. On Frida’s bed, the one in which she spent her final months, sits the decorated cast she wore like a corset after a bus pole impaled her in a horrific traffic accident. A few of her paintings hang on the walls. (No pictures were allowed. Sorry!)

Frida was interested in communism and helped Leon Trotsky and his wife, Natalia, come to Mexico City after they were exiled from the Soviet Union. Trotsky and Frida became close, and they reportedly had an affair during the brief period the Trotskys lived in La Casa Azul. Nearby is the Trotsky Museum, connected to the home Leon Trotsky and his wife, Natalia, lived in later. The museum, maintained by Trotsky’s grandson, contains artifacts from Trotsky’s life, pictures of him and his family throughout their lives, and the newspaper articles reporting his death, gruesome photographs included.

The courtyard behind the building leads to the couple’s gravesite and then the house itself, an ivy-covered stone building. A watchtower stands outside, and some walls are pockmarked with bullets, as Stalin’s agents tried desperately to get to Trotsky. His office looks just as it appeared the day he was killed with an ice pick in that very room.

In San Angel sits the home Frida shared with her artist husband, Diego Rivera. A unique building, split down the middle, Frida and Diego’s separate living quarters are joined by a rooftop walkway. On Diego’s side, a painting he was working on when he died rests on an easel, and his cane leans against a chair. Frida’s side is sparse due to the fact that she spent the final years of her life at La Casa Azul. Her narrow kitchen is simple, with only two burners, a small sink, and a few dishes made by craftspeople.

Looking at the photos of these places cannot convey the feeling inspired by actually standing in them. They are not stuffy museums but three houses where history happened. When I decorated my house, I thought of La Casa Azul and tried to recreate the feeling I had there, mostly Frida’s lust for life and none of the pain and sorrow that haunted her.