Mexico City

Behind the Postal Palace, you'll find what is IMHO the most beautiful square in the city. Plaza Tolsá:

Both the statue and the plaza were designed by architect Manuel Tolsá during the Colonial years.

The statue of Charles IV of Spain, known as El Caballito ("The Horsey") originally had a feathered helmet at the horse's front foot.

Facing The Horsey, the Palace of Mining, which was for decades UNAM's Nacional School of Engineering. It's a museum for the University now, and it host every year the Book Fair.



Behind The Horsey, The National Art Museum:

We keep on strolling downtown, and find:

The Old Palace of the Inquisition.

Lots of heretics tortured here, then it was military barracks, the National School of Medicine (the romantic poet Manuel Acuña committed suicide there, on december 1870). It is now the Museum of Medicine:



It is located in the Plaza de Santo Domingo.

Other interesting sites in Old Downtown Mexico City.

The City Theatre


The Old Chamber of Representatives (now the Assembly for the Federal District, the local Congress):



Casa Boker:



The Spanish Casino:



And some other corners:

Geez, Baez, such depth all around you.
Pulsing.
Such immensity of history.

No wonder Humboldt said Mexico City was "The City of Palaces".
(Of course, good Baron Von Humboldt always had something nice to say about the places he visited ).

A thumb law about the age of the buildings in downtown Mexico City : if they have red volcanic stone, they're from the Colonial period. If they're whitish, they're from the XIX Century. If they're ugly, they're from the mid XX Century.

Out stroll has taken us back to Casa de los Azulejos.
We see an empty plot, with statues. By Rodin:







Right next to them is the entrance to the elevator of Torre Latinoamericana. It was "the tallest building in Latin America" until the 1970s:

Here it is, seen from the other side. Torre Latinoamericana:

Thanks very much FB. I love Mexico City, the residence of many of my relatives. I planned to eventually retire there but the air and traffic (and now the narcotraficantes) persuaded me to stay in Arizona. But such visions: the greatest curse, I believe, is to be blind in Venice and Mexico City.

JL Nobody: "The greatest curse, I believe, is to be blind in Venice and Mexico City".

I'll get your word for air and traffic. Freaking infernal traffic.
But the city is safer now than it was a few years ago, a few decades ago... ever.

Bingo -
I'm happy you are telling us all this.

The true reason behind the thread is that I feel that Mexico City is often overlooked, amid prejudices about the country.
It is, indeed, a great city.

So far, we have only seen an important part, not all, of Centro Histórico. Only a small fraction -small, I insist- of what the city has to offer.

Travellers with an acute eye -my German daughter-in-law, our Robert Gentel- have noticed that this is not just "a city", but several intertwined cities-boroughs-neighborhoods, each one with a different history, with different flavors, different architectural looks, different rythms and different kinds of people.

That makes sense.
I agree it is overlooked.
And I get it re areas.

At this point, I travel by reading, but I was there and liked standing there.

In my memory, I got into loving Rome asleep on my feet, standing just out of a metro.
In my memory, I got into loving Mexico City, staring at peseros roaring by.

Carry on.

Great thread.....would love it if you felt like telling us a bit about what the history murals depict.

I never realised Robert Gentel was your daughter-in-law.

**** happens, but he's not my daughter-in-law.

This brings up mems of early reading, something about vecindades, Lewis?

I have a faint memory that you snarfed at that, but not sure.

In front of the Banco de Mexico building, and Torre Latinoamericana, we find one of the most known features of Mexico City, the Palace of Fine Arts, Palacio de Bellas Artes.
Bellas Artes was to be the National Theatre when construction started in the earliy XX Century, before the Revolution. After years of struggle and several archetectonic changes, it was inaugurated in 1934.

This is how it looks inside, with its famous Tiffany curtain.