Palacio de Bellas Artes - Marble, Murals and Glass

Photo: Correogsk, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

A stop on Mexico City: Centro Historico Walk, a free self-guided tour.

Before you rises the city's grandest building, a white marble palace crowned by a tiled dome. Adamo Boari began it in 1904 as a showpiece opera house, but the soft ground and then the Mexican Revolution stalled the work for years. Federico Mariscal finally finished it in 1934, which is why the outside is ornate Art Nouveau and Neoclassical while the inside turns to sleek Art Deco. The heavy building has sunk about four meters into the old lakebed.

Inside, the upper floors hold some of the most important murals in Mexico, by Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Rufino Tamayo. Rivera's panel here recreates a mural he first painted at Rockefeller Center in New York, which was destroyed there in 1934.

In the theater hangs a stage curtain made by Tiffany of New York from nearly a million pieces of glass, showing the two volcanoes that watch over the Valley of Mexico. Check the website for hours, admission and curtain viewings.

Getting here: Cross Eje Central at the corner and walk around the building to its main entrance, which faces the Alameda.

Did you know?: The Tiffany glass curtain weighs about 24 tons and folds away like a giant accordion.

Photo op: Walk toward the edge of the Alameda and turn around to frame the whole facade with the dome centered above the entrance.

More on Wikipedia: Palacio de Bellas Artes · Federico Mariscal · Man at the Crossroads

Palacio de Bellas Artes - Marble, Murals and Glass

Stops on this tour