Palace of the Marquis of Apartado, another work by Tolsá

Palace of the Marquis of Apartado. Another great work by Tolsá, the palace was built for D. Jose de Fagoaga y Villaurrutia, second Marquis of Apartado. The Palace has two facades, the main one looking to the east is ornamented by Doric pilasters and a grand pediment on Calle de Argentina facing the archaeological  site of the Templo Mayor, the reason Tolsá had for using pilasters instead of columns was that the street was narrow and the palace had several houses in front, then the pilasters would lighten the massive structure, avoiding the feeling of an oppressive building on the pedestrians, unfortunately the Mexican authorities didn´t observe the international convention for archaeological diggings in urban environments and pull down the houses, a few of them from the XVIII c , and left the splendid building without any reference, hence diminishing its scale, in addition the open sky digging has badly affected not only the Apartado Palace but even the Cathedral due to the water filtering into the subsoil, you can easily see that the ruins of the templo Mayor are now rising over the street level a direct consequence of the above. During the Napoleonic invasion of Spain there were plans of moving the royal family to Mexico City as the Portuguese did with the Braganza sending them to Brazil, and this palace was meant to be the residence of King Ferdinand  VII.

Palace of the Marquis of Buenavista, Museo Nacional de San Carlos

Palace of the Marquis of Buenavista. Built by Tolsá, by order of the Countess of Pinillos and Marchioness of Selva Nevada for her son the Marquis of Buenavista, it was finished in 1803, neoclassical with some baroque influence. It has a beautiful concave façade and the only elliptical courtyard from the XVIII /XIX cc in Mexico City, it has two facades the main one to the north and the second to the south looking to what remains of the garden. The palace houses the National Museum of San Carlos, custodian of the European art collection of the nation, the core of the collection is the legacy of the Royal Academy of San Carlos of Noble Arts (1780), the collection for American or European standards is modest, but very tasteful, with great examples of Flemish ¨tables¨, Sánchez Coello, José de Ribera, Tintoretto, Zurbaran and others. Not very often visited by foreigners, it helps to complete the view of the neoclassical city and to have a more rounded panorama of Mexico City art collections.

Mineria Place, Neoclassical masterpiece

Palace of Minería, (old mining engineering school) . By the end of the XVIII c. a new aesthetic discourse had been established by the Bourbons in Spain and its dominions, the man in charge to preach the new architectonic creed in Mexico was Manuel Tolsá as Director of Architecture of The San Carlos Academy of Noble Arts. The Neoclassical style will break away with the baroque tradition and it will emphasize the light of reason through the revival of the classical forms. The Palace of Minería is a good example of it, it was the seat of the Mining Engineering School and it is the triumph of the horizontal over the vertical line, the façade follows strictly the classical canon with its great pediment  topped by the observatory, the courtyard is severe, with the arches of the upper floor almost flat, providing a welcome lightness to the building, the great staircase is a bit baroque for my taste, but beautiful and grand, don´t miss the chapel and look carefully to the details, the unremarkable inner courtyards, the long corridors with a bright medallion at the end, etc, all of it tries to tell you, in the opinion of many, a Masonic lesson.