Atmosphere
Ciudad Universitaria is an open place popular on Sundays with families that wish to explore its patios, gardens and footpaths that cover most of its 1,000 hectares. It was built on a lava layer six to eight meters thick which was deposited by the Xitle volcano around 100 AD.
Due to its topography and vegetation, there are very few straight roads or paths. Roads tend to be concentric circuits, with buildings located within them. Some can only be reached by a short, 5-10 minute walk. Volcanic rock was removed to make room for the buildings, and it was used to make pathways and outer walls. Buildings themselves are made with common materials, concrete and brick being most common, and usually have big windows and gardens, both inside and outside. Most buildings have only two to three floors.
Although different in style, gardens and volcanic rock are a common theme across all buildings with some notable exceptions: the Rectorate Tower and the Central Library. These tall, square-shaped buildings, standing a bit isolated from the rest, are adorned by murals made by famous Mexican muralists David Alfaro Siqueiros (Rectorate Tower) and Juan O'Gorman (Central Library).
This last mural, recognized as the largest mural in the world, covering all sides of the Library, based on Aztec and Spanish motifs and UNAM's coat of arms, makes the Central Library Ciudad Universitaria's most iconic building.
The Campus Central is the original campus built in 1943. Comprising 200 hectares, Insurgentes Avenue cuts across it.
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Famous quotes containing the word atmosphere:
“And so I look on those sentiments which make the glory of the human being, love, humility, faith, as being also the intimacy of Divinity in the atoms; and, that, as soon as the man is right, assurances and previsions emanate from the interior of his body and his mind; as, when flowers reach their ripeness, incence exhales from them, and, as a beautiful atmosphere is generated from the planet by the averaged emanations from all its rocks and soils.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)