The Paseo de la Reforma is the city's grand boulevard, a tree-lined diagonal slash through the modern centre. The Emperor Maximilian commissioned it in 1864 — modelled on the Champs-Élysées and the Vienna Ringstrasse — to give him a fast carriage route from Chapultepec Castle to the National Palace at the Zócalo. After his execution and the restoration of the Republic, President Juárez kept the road and renamed it Reforma.
Walking the Reforma from Chapultepec to the Centro is one of the best ways to read the city's last century and a half: the Diana the Huntress fountain, the Ángel de la Independencia, the Estela de Luz, the cluster of new skyscrapers around the Torre Mayor, and finally the older colonial centre at the eastern end. On Sundays the road closes for cyclists and rollerbladers from 8 am to 2 pm.