El Obispado

El Obispado is a Baroque palace on the Cerro del Obispado, a hill on the west side of central Monterrey, and the oldest building from the viceregal era in the city. It was completed in 1787–1788 for Fray Rafael José Verger, the Majorcan Franciscan who was the second bishop of Linares, on land the town council granted him as a retreat and house of prayer; it was first called the Palacio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. Verger enjoyed it for only a couple of years before his death in 1790. Built of ashlar limestone, it has a carved stone facade, arcades and a dome that was completed in the 1850s.

Its hilltop position made it a fortress for much of the 19th century. During the US invasion of 1846, Mexican troops under Colonel Francisco Berra held the hill with cannon to cover the road from Saltillo. American troops under General William J. Worth worked around the western approaches, and on September 22 Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Childs' men took the high point by surprise; the Obispado fell that afternoon and US flags flew over it until the peace of 1848. The building saw action again during the French intervention, the Plan de la Noria revolt of 1871 and the early Mexican Revolution in 1913–1914, served as an isolation hospital in the epidemics of the 1890s and 1903, and even housed a cabaret around 1920.

Restoration began in 1946, and on September 20, 1956, the building opened as the Museo Regional de Nuevo León, run by INAH, with support from the state university and the Fundidora steel company. Its two floors and ten rooms tell the history of Nuevo León from early times to the Revolution. Higher up the hill, the Mirador Asta Bandera holds a giant flag and a panoramic view over the city, with downtown and the Cerro de la Silla to the east. The surrounding slopes are a state-protected urban park, and the colonia around the hill is still called Obispado.