Dan Will Travel

Palacio Nacional

This is the Mexican seat of government similar to our Capitol building. As a tourist you go here to see the famous murals on the second floor exterior walls. Again, they feature revolutionary themes but this seems more appropriate here versus the ones at the Bellas Artes.

Sculpture in the inner gardens area of the Palacio.

Inner courtyard, Palacio Nacional. You can see the murals on the middle floor.

Diego Rivera’s masterpiece, “Epic of the Mexican People,” in the stairwell at the Palacio Nacional. It also wraps around each adjoining wall. Dates from 1925-1935.

Close up of part of the Rivera mural. The pipes are essentially sucking the fruits of the worker’s labor up and out to wall street tycoons.

Mural showing the huge gift to the world of corn, originally from Mexico. The peasant has seeds in his hand and a tool to plant them.

Posted: December 17, 2019 by admin

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Well, as I said, it is Sinking…..

Buildings in Mexico City face a number of problems. Besides the active earthquakes, close by volcanoes and all, the city was built on a dried up lake bed. Which has never been stable and is constantly sinking but at different rates and different amounts depending upon the specific location. This was a construction issue even 500+ years ago, and remains so today. I had read about this in the past, but seeing the actual results were really something.

No, this is not a fish eye lens. The Villa de Guadalupe cathedral, the most visited cathedral in the world is really sinking. Walking inside was very difficult because the smooth marble floors are at such weird angles. The newer church was built in the round partially to better distribute weight.

How about a close up of this? Pretty amazing that it is still standing and still having millions of visitors each year! For me, if I would have seen this angle before going in, I am not sure that I would have!

Moving on, this is also really something! In the center of the Main cathedral, Metropolitana, they have installed a pendulum to track the sinking and movement of the building. Currently it seems pretty well centered, but can you see the huge movement that has occurred? It is a line sort of like a huge arc. This is hung from the peak of the highest cupola. As I noted above, somehow they have gone underneath and stabilized the base.

Found this bowing building on a side street near the zocalo. There is a very pronounced bowing out by the doorway.

Looks like slate roof? No just a very uneven street uncovered at Templo Mayor.

Posted: December 16, 2019 by admin

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Templo Mayor and the Cathedral Metropolitana

I decided to group these two vastly different places together in one story as they essentially occupy the same space, one built sort of on top of the other.

The cathedral is the largest in the Americas, begin in 1525 very shortly after the Spanish conquest of Mexico. It is huge of course, and very baroque. It has really suffered from the sinking soil issue but somehow they have engineered changes underneath to stabilize it. How, I have no idea.

Templo Mayor is a Aztec period temple started around 1325 or so and served as the center of their capital, Tenochtitlan. As was typical then, temples were expanded by essentially just building over the existing one with a new layer. This one ended up with 7 distinct layers and reached a height nearly the same as the present day cathedral. When the Spanish arrived, they essentially destroyed it. (Like they typically did everywhere.) The area even spent time as a city dump. It was not until an unexpected finding in 1978 that the excavations began and unearthed this amazing area. Below you will see a shot of a model of the area showing that the Aztec structures fully covered the entire zocalo area including the site of today’s giant cathedral.