Plaza Venezuela is the great roundabout where the modernist Caracas of Sabana Grande meets the Ciudad Universitaria — a vast traffic circle with a central fountain that was the city's most fashionable address in the 1950s and is still one of the most recognisable urban set pieces in the country. A new fountain installed in 2010 throws coloured water jets to music in the evenings, drawing locals at weekends.
The plaza is the gateway to the Sabana Grande pedestrian boulevard heading east and to the Ciudad Universitaria heading west. The metro station of the same name is one of the busiest in the system. The María Lionza statue — sculptor Alejandro Colina's famous equestrian image of the Venezuelan folk-religion goddess riding a tapir — used to stand on the central island; the original is now in the Universidad Central and a copy stands here.