National Palace

Stand at the edge of the Zócalo and face east. The ground under your feet is wide, flat stone, warm by midday. Across the square, a long wall of dark red stone fills your view. It is low and steady, not tall. Flags move above it, and the noise of traffic, vendors and drummers carries across the open space. This is the National Palace, the seat of Mexico's federal government.

That red stone has a name. It is tezontle, a light, porous volcanic rock from the Valley of Mexico. Look closely and you will see small holes across its surface, like a sponge turned to stone. Builders here used it for centuries. It was easy to cut, it was light enough for soft ground, and its colour gives the old city centre its warm tone. The pale grey stone around the doors and windows is a different material, and the contrast frames each opening.

Now, a surprise. This building is not where Mexico's power first stood on this spot. It is only the latest layer. Before the Spanish arrived, this ground held the palace of Moctezuma the Second, the ruler of the Mexica, the people often called the Aztecs. Their island city, Tenochtitlan, had its sacred heart just north of here. The ruins of its Great Temple are a short walk from where you are standing.

After the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521, the conqueror Hernán Cortés took this site for himself. He built a residence on top of the Mexica foundations, partly with stone taken from the old city. Later, the Spanish Crown acquired the property. For most of the colonial period, the building housed the viceroys, the officials who ruled New Spain in the name of the king. Courts, offices and a prison all worked inside its walls.

The palace has not had a quiet life. In 1692, during a riot over food shortages, crowds set fire to parts of the building. It was repaired and rebuilt in the years that followed. Over the next centuries, each government reshaped it. One change is easy to miss... the top storey. A third floor was added in the twentieth century. Once you know this, the facade looks a little different.

Look up at the central balcony, above the main door. A bell hangs there. Most visitors walk past without noticing it. This is the bell from the town of Dolores, in central Mexico. In 1810, the priest Miguel Hidalgo rang a church bell there and called on people to rise against Spanish rule. That call began the War of Independence. The bell was brought to this palace in the late nineteenth century.

Every year, on the night of the fifteenth of September, the president steps onto that balcony. The president rings the bell and repeats a version of Hidalgo's call, ending with cries of "Viva México". The square below fills with tens of thousands of people. There is music, fireworks and green, white and red everywhere. The ceremony is called the Grito, which means "the Cry". On an ordinary day, the balcony is empty and still.

When you enter, the noise of the square drops away. You pass into courtyards lined with arcades of stone arches. The palace holds several of these patios, linked by corridors. Light falls into them from above, and the arches throw long shadows across the floor. Expect security checks at the entrance. This is a working government building, so some areas may be closed without warning.

Then comes the staircase. This is the reason many people come. On the walls of the main stairway, the painter Diego Rivera created an enormous mural of Mexico's history. He worked on it from 1929 into the mid-1930s. The painting wraps around three walls. It runs from the world before the conquest, through Spanish rule and the wars of the nineteenth century, to the struggles of Rivera's own time.

It helps to know how to read it. Rivera painted in fresco, which means pigment brushed onto wet plaster, so the colour becomes part of the wall itself. The scenes are crowded with hundreds of figures. Rivera was a committed Marxist, a follower of the ideas of Karl Marx, and his politics are clear. On the left wall, look for Marx himself, near the top, pointing toward a different future. Rivera also painted the artist Frida Kahlo, his wife, into this section.

On the upper corridor, the story continues. Here Rivera painted a series of panels about the cultures of ancient Mexico. You will see markets, farming, crafts and the making of paper and dyes. Some panels imitate old stone carvings in soft grey tones. Rivera worked on these corridor panels for years, into the 1950s. He died in 1957 before he could finish. Walk to the end and you will notice the series simply stops.

The palace also remembers Benito Juárez, the nineteenth-century president who led Mexico through civil war and a French invasion. Juárez was of Zapotec origin, one of Mexico's Indigenous peoples. He lived in this building and died here in 1872. Rooms connected to his life are kept as a memorial space inside the palace. Statues and plaques to him appear in several places, so keep an eye out as you walk.

So think about layers as you move through these rooms. Under the floor lie Mexica foundations. Around you stand colonial walls and arches. On the walls are twentieth-century paintings that argue about everything that came before. And upstairs, the government of today goes on with its work. Few buildings carry so many chapters of one country in one place.

When you step back out into the Zócalo, turn around once more. Look at the red stone with its small holes, the grey frames around the windows, the bell above the balcony. The flags are still moving. The drummers are still playing. Somewhere under the paving stones, the old city is still there too... quiet, and very close.