Unspecified/General

Crowning a hill in the great Chapultepec park of Mexico City, Chapultepec Castle is the only true castle in North America to have housed reigning sovereigns, and its commanding position has made it a witness to much of the nation's history. Construction began in 1785 on the orders of the Spanish viceroy, on a hill the ancient Aztecs had held sacred, and over the following century the building served in turn as a military academy, an imperial residence and a presidential home. During the Mexican-American War in 1847 it was the scene of a celebrated battle in which young military cadets, remembered as the Ninos Heroes, are said to have died defending it. In the 1860s the Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlota made it their lavish residence, laying out the sweeping avenue now called the Paseo de la Reforma to connect it to the city centre, and later Mexican presidents lived here until the 1930s. Since 1944 the castle has housed the National Museum of History, its rooms displaying period furnishings, carriages, paintings and murals, while its terraces and gardens offer sweeping views over the park and the city. The castle's position atop the hill of Chapultepec, a name meaning grasshopper hill in the Aztec language, gives it both strategic command and symbolic weight, for the rocky outcrop had been a retreat of Aztec rulers long before the Spanish arrived. The building visitors see today is a graceful neoclassical and eclectic palace, much altered over the years, with elegant rooms, a roof garden and a stained-glass gallery, and the contrast between its European refinement and the dense green park below is part of its charm. The episode of the boy cadets in 1847, when the United States army stormed the hill during its invasion of Mexico, became one of the most powerful patriotic legends of the nation, commemorated by a grand monument at the foot of the hill, and it is invoked to this day. The lavish residence created for the short-lived empire of Maximilian and Carlota in the 1860s left its mark in the formal apartments and the laying out of the great boulevard linking the castle to the heart of the city. As the National Museum of History since the 1940s, the castle now guides visitors through the centuries from the Spanish conquest to the Revolution, its galleries hung with murals by leading Mexican painters, while its balconies command some of the finest views over the sprawling capital and the wooded expanse of Chapultepec.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Primera Seccion del Bosque de Chapultepec, Mexico City, Mexico

Website: https://mnh.inah.gob.mx

Opening Date: 27/09/1944