Macroplaza

The Macroplaza is the huge open space at the center of Monterrey: 40 hectares of linked squares, gardens, fountains and monuments, often described as the largest plaza in Mexico and one of the five largest in the world. It stretches from the Palacio de Gobierno of Nuevo León to the new Palacio Municipal, with the cathedral and the Barrio Antiguo on its east side. The sector that was once Plaza Zaragoza is run by the city and the rest by the state.

It is a product of the 1980s. The idea of a public corridor joining the city hall and the government palace was floated in 1969 and taken up by Governor Alfonso Martínez Domínguez; the state congress approved the project in November 1981, and the final design, by the firm 103 Grupo de Diseño of Oscar Bulnes and Benjamín Félix, built on an earlier plan by Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Eduardo Terrazas. The plaza was finished and named in 1984. The cost to the old city was heavy: about 40 blocks were cleared and 427 buildings, many of them colonial or 19th-century, were demolished.

Along the way are the Explanada de los Héroes, a 19,400 m² parade ground in front of the neoclassical Palacio de Gobierno, which holds the governor's office and a museum; the Biblioteca Central Fray Servando Teresa de Mier and the Teatro de la Ciudad; the Condominio Acero by Mario Pani; and the Neptune fountain and sunken garden. Midway rises the Faro del Comercio, a 69.8-meter tower built in 1983–1984 for the centenary of the Monterrey Chamber of Commerce and credited to Luis Barragán, which sends a green laser across the sky at night. Opposite stand the cathedral, the MARCO contemporary art museum and the old Palacio Municipal, now the Museo Metropolitano, and at the south end is Rufino Tamayo's sculpture Homenaje al Sol. To the east, the Explanada Santa Lucía holds the Museo de Historia Mexicana, opened in 1994, and the Museo del Noreste, and it is where the Paseo Santa Lucía boat ride begins.