Monuments
Many monuments to people and events in Mexico's history and the history of the Americas are situated on and along Reforma. Honored people include the Niños Héroes – the Heroic Cadets of the Battle of Chapultepec – with a particularly grand monument in the entrance of Chapultepec Park, Cuauhtémoc, Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín and Christopher Columbus. There is also a fountain with sculptures that conmemorate the nationalization of Mexico's oil reserves and industry in 1938, and a fountain that includes a statue featuring the Roman goddess Diana originally named The Arrow Thrower of the North Star.
One of the most famous monuments of the Paseo is El Ángel de la Independencia – a tall column with a gilded statue of a Winged Victory (that bears resemblance with an angel, therefore its common name) on its top and many marble statues on its base depicting the heroes of the Mexican War of Independence, built to commemorate the centennial of Mexico's independence in 1910. The base contains the tombs of several key figures in Mexico's war of independence.
Near the central section of Reforma, across from the Alameda, is the Monument to the Revolution. This is an enormous dome supported by four arches. It was originally planned, by Porfirio Díaz, to be a part of a new parliament building, but it never was completed because of the start of the Mexican Revolution. After Díaz's overthrow it became a monument to the revolution that deposed him. The remains of Francisco I. Madero and several other heroes of the Mexican Revolution are buried here.
Read more about this topic: Paseo De La Reforma
Famous quotes containing the word monuments:
“If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)