Alameda Central

The Alameda Central is the green heart of downtown Mexico City, a park of shady paths and fountains between Avenida Juárez and Avenida Hidalgo, with the Palacio de Bellas Artes at its eastern end. Viceroy Luis de Velasco ordered it in 1592 as a place for the city's people to stroll and rest, modelled on the Alameda de Hércules in Seville, and it is usually called the oldest public park in the Americas. The name comes from álamo, the poplar trees first planted here. Its western end had a grimmer past as the plaza where the Inquisition burned its condemned. In 1770 the viceroy Marqués de Croix enlarged it and added fountains, a fence went up in 1791 to keep it for the well-to-do, and after Independence it became the place for popular celebrations instead.

The layout of diagonal paths meeting at round plazas, each with a fountain, still dates from those centuries. The fountains carry 19th-century French statues: Neptune, cast in 1856 and placed here in 1889; Venus, a gift from its sculptor to Maximilian in 1866; and the Danaides, among others, plus a monument to Beethoven. On the Avenida Juárez side stands the Hemiciclo a Juárez, a half-circle of twelve white marble Doric columns around a statue of Juárez, dedicated on 18 September 1910, with figures by the Italian sculptor Alessandro Lazzerini. A large renovation reopened it in November 2012 with new paving, replanted trees and restored fountains, and moved the street stalls out.

The best way to see the Alameda is through Diego Rivera's eyes. In 1947 he painted Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central, a fresco 15.6 meters long, for a hotel dining room across the street, crowding it with more than 150 figures from Mexican history, from Cortés and Juárez to Porfirio Díaz, Madero and Frida Kahlo, all taking a Sunday walk in the park. When the 1985 earthquake wrecked the hotel, the 15-ton wall was cut out and moved, and the Museo Mural Diego Rivera was built around it, opening in 1988 on Calle Balderas at the park's west end. Today the park is still a meeting place for the whole city.