Monumento a la Revolución

Massive Art Deco dome — once meant to be a parliament building

Address Plaza de la República

The Monument to the Revolution is one of the strangest pieces of architecture in Mexico City: a 67-metre Art Deco dome on four enormous bronze-clad piers, the unintended remnant of a never-finished neoclassical parliament. President Porfirio Díaz commissioned the original Legislative Palace in 1897; only the structural frame of the central rotunda was up when the Revolution toppled him in 1910. The frame stood empty for twenty years until the architect Carlos Obregón Santacilia repurposed it as the present monument, finally inaugurated in 1938.

Each of the four piers holds the tomb of a Revolutionary leader — Madero, Villa, Carranza, Cárdenas. A glass elevator inside one pier rises to a viewing platform inside the dome and onto an external observation level. The vast plaza below is the location of regular protests, dance classes, food trucks, and the largest public skate ramps in the city.

things to do sight architecture viewpoint
A story
The dome started life as the central rotunda of a vast Legislative Palace begun by Porfirio Díaz. The revolution stopped construction. Twenty years later, somebody had the idea to convert what already stood into a monument to the very revolution that had killed the project.

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