Palace of Fine Arts, Mexico City

In 1904, the construction of the Palace of Fine Arts (Palacio de Bellas Artes) began on the remains of the Santa Isabel convent. Porfirio Diaz had wanted to inaugurate it in 1911, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Mexico's independence from Spain. However, the project, under the guidance of Italian architect Adamo Boari, suffered serious setbacks due to the instability of the ground that had been chosen for the building. Time passed, the revolution broke out, and in the end the palace was not completed until 1934, with architect Federico Mariscal heading the project. It is not strange, therefore, that the marble facade, built in a style between Neo-Classical and Art Nouveau, is contrasted by an interior that looks much more Art Deco in appearance. Art connoisseurs will certainly appreciate the museum's murals by Rivera, Siqueiros, Orozco, Tamayo, and Montenegro, along with the glass Tiffany curtain, composed of almost a million individual pieces, on which Doctor Atl (a modern Mexican landscape painter) depicted the volcanoes of Mexico.