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.