Torre Latinoamericana

The Torre Latinoamericana stands at the corner of Calle Madero and Eje Central Lázaro Cárdenas, across the street from the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and for decades it was the symbol of a modern Mexico City. It was built between 1948 and 1956 for the insurance company La Latinoamericana, whose name still runs around the top, and opened on 30 April 1956. With 44 floors, it rises 166 meters to the roof and about 182 meters to the tip of its antenna. When it opened it was the tallest building in Latin America, and it stayed the tallest in Mexico until the Pemex tower was finished in 1982. The plot has a long history of its own: it was part of Moctezuma II's animal house before the conquest, and later of the great Franciscan convent of San Francisco.

What made the tower famous among engineers is that it was one of the first skyscrapers built on soft, earthquake-prone ground. Architect Augusto H. Álvarez and the engineers Leonardo and Adolfo Zeevaert gave it a light steel frame resting on deep piles driven through the old lakebed clay. A year after it opened, the 1957 earthquake shook the city hard and the tower came through unharmed, which won it an award from the American Institute of Steel Construction; it also came through the devastating 1985 earthquake without damage. It is now a protected historic monument, so its outside cannot be altered.

The main reason to come today is the Mirador, the observation area at the top. A ticket gives you the glassed-in viewing levels and the open-air terrace on the 44th floor, the highest public lookout in the city, with the Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Alameda right below and the city spreading out to the mountains. The ticket also covers the small museum on floor 38 about the history of the building and its site, and a combined ticket adds the Museo del Bicentenario on floor 36. A newer thrill ride sits on floor 42, and there are cafés and a restaurant on the upper floors. The tower has appeared in films such as Amores perros and the James Bond film Spectre.