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.