Unspecified/General

The grandest cultural building in Mexico, the Palacio de Bellas Artes, or Palace of Fine Arts, rises in gleaming white marble at the edge of the Alameda Central in the historic heart of Mexico City, its great tiled dome a landmark of the capital. The palace had a long and troubled birth: commissioned during the rule of Porfirio Diaz in the early years of the twentieth century and designed by the Italian architect Adamo Boari in an opulent Art Nouveau style, its construction was interrupted by the Revolution and by the difficulty of building on the soft, sinking subsoil of the city, and it was finally completed only in 1934, by which time the interior had been finished in the bold geometric Art Deco style then in fashion, giving the building its striking contrast between an ornate exterior and a modern interior. Inside, the palace serves as a concert hall, opera house and theatre, home to the national opera, symphony orchestra and the Ballet Folklorico, and its stage is famous for a curtain of coloured glass depicting the valley of Mexico, made by Tiffany of New York. The upper floors hold a museum whose walls bear monumental murals by the great Mexican painters Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros and others, making the building a treasury of twentieth-century Mexican art. The contrast between the building's two great phases of design gives it a singular character, the creamy white exterior with its rounded forms, sculpture and tiled dome belonging to the optimistic, ornate world of the years before the Revolution, while the interior, finished a generation later, gleams with the angular marble, brass and stained glass of Art Deco, a visible record of the upheaval that divided the two eras. The technical struggle to raise so heavy a building on the spongy bed of the drained lake on which the city stands left the palace slowly sinking over the years, a problem familiar to many of the city's great monuments. As the foremost cultural venue in the country, the palace is home to the national opera, the national symphony orchestra and the Ballet Folklorico, and its main hall is renowned for the stage curtain of opalescent glass, assembled by the Tiffany studio from nearly a million pieces, which depicts the volcanoes and valley of Mexico. The murals on the upper floors form a gallery of the giants of Mexican muralism, including Rivera's version of a work first painted for and destroyed at Rockefeller Center, alongside powerful pieces by Orozco, Siqueiros, Tamayo and others. Both as a stage for the performing arts and as a museum of monumental painting, the palace stands at the centre of the cultural life of the nation.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Avenida Juarez, Mexico City, Mexico

Website: https://museopalaciodebellasartes.gob.mx

Opening Date: 29/09/1934