The Palacio Quemado sits on the north side of Plaza Murillo, facing the Cathedral across the square. It is a solid, neoclassical block of a building — pale stone, symmetrical facade, nothing that shouts presidential ambition — and yet it has been at the centre of more political turbulence than almost any building in South America. Bolivia has had well over 200 coups and governmental changes since independence, and a great many of them have begun or ended at this address.
The palace is not generally open to visitors, which means you will see it from the outside, ideally from the benches in Plaza Murillo. The square itself is worth time: it is where the pigeons and the pensioners sit, where demonstrations collect, and where the whole civic life of central La Paz plays out. The statue in the middle is Pedro Domingo Murillo, the independence hero executed here in 1810 who apparently said at his death that the torch he was lighting could not be extinguished. The plaza, the street, and a department of Bolivia are all named after him.