An Art Nouveau exterior around an Art Deco interior, with murals by Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros and a Tiffany glass curtain.
Begun in 1904 under Porfirio Díaz to mark the centenary of independence, designed by the Italian architect Adamo Boari in Art Nouveau marble. Construction was interrupted by the Revolution and by the discovery that the building was sinking into the soft lake bed faster than expected.
It was finished in 1934 by Federico Mariscal, who completed the interior in Art Deco — so the outside is 1904 and the inside is 1930, and the join is visible.
The building has sunk around four metres since it was begun. The original ground-floor entrance is now below street level, and steps go down into it.
The murals
The second floor and third floor hold some of the most important murals in Mexico.
Diego Rivera’s Man, Controller of the Universe — a recreation of Man at the Crossroads, the fresco commissioned for the Rockefeller Center in New York in 1933 and destroyed on Rockefeller’s orders after Rivera refused to remove a portrait of Lenin. Rivera repainted it here the following year, and added a portrait of John D. Rockefeller Jr drinking in a nightclub beside a dish of syphilis bacteria.
It is the most famous act of artistic revenge of the twentieth century and it is on the wall.
José Clemente Orozco’s Catharsis. David Alfaro Siqueiros’s New Democracy, painted with industrial pyroxylin and projected forward off the wall. Rufino Tamayo and Roberto Montenegro also.
The glass curtain
The theatre’s fire curtain is a stained-glass mosaic by Tiffany, weighing 24 tonnes, showing the volcanoes Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl, made from around a million pieces of opalescent glass and assembled in New York.
It is lowered and illuminated from behind before Ballet Folklórico de México performances, which is the reliable way to see it.
Going
Ballet Folklórico performs regional dances several times a week and is the standard reason to attend — spectacular costume, live mariachi, and the glass curtain.
The Palacio de Bellas Artes is also the national opera and concert venue, with the National Symphony.
Museum entry to the murals is separate and inexpensive; closed Mondays.
The view of it
The Torre Latinoamericana across the road and the Sears café on its eighth floor both look down onto the orange-tiled dome, and the café view is the famous photograph.
Alameda Central beside it is the oldest public park in the Americas, laid out in 1592.
More Landmarks
The Zócalo and the Cathedral
One of the largest squares in the world, laid out on the ceremonial centre of Tenochtitlan, with a cathedral built from its stones.
Castillo de Chapultepec
The only royal castle in the Americas, on a hill that was sacred to the Aztecs, holding the national history museum.
Torre Latinoamericana
A 1956 skyscraper on the soft bed of a drained lake in an earthquake zone, which is still standing because of how it was built.