Equestrian statue of Charles IV of Spain
The equestrian statue of Charles IV of Spain is a bronze sculpture cast by Manuel Tolsá on August 4, 1802 in Mexico City, Mexico in honour of King Charles IV of Spain the last ruler of the New Spain. This statue has been displayed in different points of the city and is considered one of the finest achievements of Mr. Tolsá, it now resides in Plaza Manuel Tolsá. The project was initiated by Miguel de la Grúa Talamanca, Marquis of Branciforte, Viceroy of the New Spain. Once he obtained permission for the monument, he appointed people to perform the work and construction began. To that end, he erected an elliptical railing with four access gates; the pedestal for the statue was inaugurated with large and well-attended parties and bullfights on 8 December 1796. A temporary statue, constructed out of wood and gilded stucco, was placed on top of the pedestal; the Equestrian Statue of Charles IV was melted and cast in one operation under the supervision of Tolsá, director of the Academy of San Carlos.
The statue required between 450 and 600 quintales of bronze, was cast in the area near the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul; the sculptor modeled the frame after a horse owned by the Marquis of Jaral of Berrio named Tambor. After being polished and engraved, the statue was taken to its pedestal and inaugurated on 9 December 1803; the celebrations and bullfights were repeated, with great jubilation. The Baron Alexander von Humboldt was present at the unveiling. In his opinion, for this genre, the statue produced by Tolsá is second only to the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, in Rome. In 1821, due to anti-Hispanic sentiment manifesting during the Mexican independence, due to a desire to replace the monument, the statue was covered in a blue tent, it was not long before people considered destroying the monument, to melt it down to reuse the bronze for guns or coins. Aggravating matters, underneath one of the hooves of the statue one will find the mark of an Aztec quiver a sign of allegiance to Spain.
The statue was saved by Lucas Alamán, who convinced Guadalupe Victoria to retain the statue on the merit of its aesthetic qualities. This resulted in the statue being relocated in 1822 to the courtyard of the ancient university, to prevent people from destroying it, it wasn't until 1824 that the public was permitted to access the statue, but the statue was much safer in this location. In 1852, after years had passed and tempers had calmed, the statue was moved to the intersection Paseo de la Reforma and Avenida Bucareli, although this time it was protected from potential damage by a grille. In 1979 it was relocated to its current location, Plaza Manuel Tolsá, overlooking the Palacio de Minería. In response to the earlier controversy surrounding the statue, the plaque on the pedestal indicates that Mexico conserved the statue as a monument to art, not as a sign of praise to a Spanish king. A smaller different version of the sculpture can be seen in the Tolsá museum opposite the statue; the statue is the second largest cast bronze statue in the world.
The place the statue occupied between 1852 and 1979, the corner of Paseo de la Reforma and Bucareli is now occupied by a statue called El caballito, by sculptor Enrique Carbajal, erected in honour of the old monument. List of public art in Mexico City Its various locations in Mexico City
Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral
The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary into Heavens is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico. It is situated atop the former Aztec sacred precinct near the Templo Mayor on the northern side of the Plaza de la Constitución in Downtown Mexico City; the cathedral was built in sections from 1573 to 1813 around the original church, constructed soon after the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlan replacing it entirely. Spanish architect Claudio de Arciniega planned the construction, drawing inspiration from Gothic cathedrals in Spain; the cathedral has four façades which contain portals flanked with statues. The two bell towers contain a total of 25 bells; the tabernacle, adjacent to the cathedral, contains the baptistery and serves to register the parishioners. There are two large, ornate altars, a sacristy, a choir in the cathedral. Fourteen of the cathedral's sixteen chapels are open to the public; each chapel is dedicated to a different saint or saints, each was sponsored by a religious guild.
The chapels contain ornate altars, retablos, paintings and sculptures. The cathedral is home to two of the largest 18th-century organs in the Americas. There is a crypt underneath the cathedral. Over the centuries, the cathedral has suffered damage. A fire in 1967 destroyed a significant part of the cathedral's interior; the restoration work that followed uncovered a number of important documents and artwork, hidden. Although a solid foundation was built for the cathedral, the soft clay soil it is built on has been a threat to its structural integrity. Dropping water tables and accelerated sinking caused the structure to be added to the World Monuments Fund list of the 100 Most Endangered Sites. Reconstruction work beginning in the 1990s stabilized the cathedral and it was removed from the endangered list in 2000. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, the conquistadors decided to build their church on the site of the Templo Mayor of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan to consolidate Spanish power over the newly conquered domain.
Hernán Cortés and the other conquistadors used the stones from the destroyed temple of the Aztec god of war Huitzilopochtli, principal deity of the Aztecs, to build the church. Cortés ordered the original church's construction after he returned from exploring what is now Honduras. Architect Martín de Sepúlveda was the first director of this project from 1524 to 1532. Juan de Zumárraga, the first Bishop of the first See of the New World, established in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, promoted this church's completion. Zumárraga's Cathedral was located in the northeast portion of, it had three naves separated by three Tuscan columns. The central roof was ridged with intricate carvings done by Juan Salcedo Espinosa and gilded by Francisco de Zumaya and Andrés de la Concha; the main door was of Renaissance style. The choir area had 48 seats made of ayacahuite wood crafted by Juan Montaño. However, this church was soon considered inadequate for the growing importance of the capital of New Spain. In 1544, ecclesiastical authorities in Valladolid ordered the creation of new and more sumptuous cathedral.
In 1552, an agreement was reached whereby the cost of the new cathedral would be shared by the Spanish crown and the native inhabitants under the direct authority of the archbishop of New Spain. The cathedral was begun by being built around the existing church in 1573; when enough of the cathedral was built to house basic functions, the original church was demolished to enable construction to continue. The cathedral was constructed over a period of over two centuries, between 1573 and 1813, its design is a mixture of three architectural styles that predominated during the colonial period, Renaissance and Neo-classic. Initial plans for the new cathedral were drawn up and work on the foundation began in 1562; the decision to have the cathedral face south instead of east was made in 1570. In the same year, construction commenced, working from the Gothic designs and models created by Claudio de Arciniega and Juan Miguel de Agüero, inspired by cathedrals found in Spanish cities such as Valladolid and Jaén.
Because of the muddy subsoil of the site, work on the foundation continued past the work on the walls to 1581. In 1585, work on the first of the cathedral's chapels began and by 1615, the cathedral's walls reached to about half of their final height. Construction of the interior of the current cathedral began in 1623 and what is now the vestry was where Mass was conducted after the first church was torn down. In 1629, work was interrupted over two metres in depth. Parts of the city were damaged around the main plaza or Zócalo; because of such damage, this site was abandoned and a new cathedral project was begun in the hills of the Tacubaya area to the west. Despite these problems, the project continued in its current location, under the direction of Luis Gómez de Transmonte, the interior was finished and consecrated in 1667; the cathedral still lacked bell towers, the complete front facade, many of the other features it has now at the beginning of the 18th century. In 1787, José Damian Ortiz de Castro was in charge of finishing work on the cathedral.
He did most of the work on the bell towers, putting in most of the fretwork and capping them with roofs in the shape of bells. With his death in 1793, he did not live to see the cathedral completed, Manuel Tolsá finished the cathedral by adding the cupola, the central front facade, the balustrades, the statues of
Spain
Spain the Kingdom of Spain, is a country located in Europe. Its continental European territory is situated on the Iberian Peninsula, its territory includes two archipelagoes: the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa, the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. The African enclaves of Ceuta, Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera make Spain the only European country to have a physical border with an African country. Several small islands in the Alboran Sea are part of Spanish territory; the country's mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with Gibraltar. With an area of 505,990 km2, Spain is the largest country in Southern Europe, the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union, the fourth largest country in the European continent. By population, Spain is the fifth in the European Union. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago. Iberian cultures along with ancient Phoenician, Greek and Carthaginian settlements developed on the peninsula until it came under Roman rule around 200 BCE, after which the region was named Hispania, based on the earlier Phoenician name Spn or Spania.
At the end of the Western Roman Empire the Germanic tribal confederations migrated from Central Europe, invaded the Iberian peninsula and established independent realms in its western provinces, including the Suebi and Vandals. The Visigoths would forcibly integrate all remaining independent territories in the peninsula, including Byzantine provinces, into the Kingdom of Toledo, which more or less unified politically and all the former Roman provinces or successor kingdoms of what was documented as Hispania. In the early eighth century the Visigothic Kingdom fell to the Moors of the Umayyad Islamic Caliphate, who arrived to rule most of the peninsula in the year 726, leaving only a handful of small Christian realms in the north and lasting up to seven centuries in the Kingdom of Granada; this led to many wars during a long reconquering period across the Iberian Peninsula, which led to the creation of the Kingdom of Leon, Kingdom of Castile, Kingdom of Aragon and Kingdom of Navarre as the main Christian kingdoms to face the invasion.
Following the Moorish conquest, Europeans began a gradual process of retaking the region known as the Reconquista, which by the late 15th century culminated in the emergence of Spain as a unified country under the Catholic Monarchs. Until Aragon had been an independent kingdom, which had expanded toward the eastern Mediterranean, incorporating Sicily and Naples, had competed with Genoa and Venice. In the early modern period, Spain became the world's first global empire and the most powerful country in the world, leaving a large cultural and linguistic legacy that includes more than 570 million Hispanophones, making Spanish the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese. During the Golden Age there were many advancements in the arts, with world-famous painters such as Diego Velázquez; the most famous Spanish literary work, Don Quixote, was published during the Golden Age. Spain hosts the world's third-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Spain is a secular parliamentary democracy and a parliamentary monarchy, with King Felipe VI as head of state.
It is a major developed country and a high income country, with the world's fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP and sixteenth largest by purchasing power parity. It is a member of the United Nations, the European Union, the Eurozone, the Council of Europe, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union for the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Schengen Area, the World Trade Organization and many other international organisations. While not an official member, Spain has a "Permanent Invitation" to the G20 summits, participating in every summit, which makes Spain a de facto member of the group; the origins of the Roman name Hispania, from which the modern name España was derived, are uncertain due to inadequate evidence, although it is documented that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians referred to the region as Spania, therefore the most accepted etymology is a Semitic-Phoenician one.
Down the centuries there have been a number of accounts and hypotheses: The Renaissance scholar Antonio de Nebrija proposed that the word Hispania evolved from the Iberian word Hispalis, meaning "city of the western world". Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the term span is the Phoenician word spy, meaning "to forge metals". Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean "the land where metals are forged", it may be a derivation of the Phoenician I-Shpania, meaning "island of rabbits", "land of rabbits" or "edge", a reference to Spain's location at the end of the Mediterranean. The word in question means "Hyrax" due to Phoenicians confusing the two animals. Hispania may derive from the poetic use of the term Hesperia, reflecting the Greek perception of Italy as a "western land" or "land of the setting sun" (Hesperia
Temple of San Felipe Neri "La Profesa"
The Temple of San Felipe Neri known as "La Profesa", is a Roman Catholic parish church, established by the Society of Jesus late in the 16th century as the church of a community of professed Jesuits. The church is considered to be an important transitional work between the more sober or moderate Baroque style of the 17th century and the decorated manifestations of the Baroque of the 18th century in Mexico. Located at the corner of Madero and Isabel la Católica Streets in Mexico City, diagonally opposite the Museo del Estanquillo, its original name was "La Iglesia de la Casa Profesa." This church is well known for being the site of a number of historical events, including the "La Profesa Conspiracy,", instrumental in bringing Agustín de Iturbide to power and the "Polkos Rebellion". More this church was the scene for deliberations relating to the beatification of Juan Diego; the church is noted for its large collection of colonial-era artworks spanning three centuries by some of Mexico's best artists including Cristóbal de Villalpando, Juan Correa, Pellegrí Clavé and José de Alcíbar.
The first Jesuit priests did not arrive to Mexico until 1572. By this time, most of the missionary work in central Mexico had been completed by other orders, such as the Augustinians and the Dominicans. Nonetheless, the Jesuits established their professed house here in 1578 and a church, using property purchased from Fernando Noriega just to the west of the Zócalo in Mexico City; this causes a legal dispute with orders that were there, as the Franciscans and Augustinians, who considered the land within their jurisdiction, but the Jesuits won in 1595. The house was called "Casa Profesa." The first church was funded by Alonso de Villaseca—commonly known as the "creso mexicano" —with donations from Fernando Núñez de Obregón and Juan Luis de Rivera. This church was built between 1610 with Juan Pérez de Soto as architect; the first church was consecrated on 31 July 1610, the feast day of the beatified Saint Ignatius of Loyola. It was given the name of "Church of the Professed House" (Spanish: Iglesia de la Casa Profesa.
This church was nearly destroyed by the Great Flood of 1629 in Mexico City. All that remains of the original construction as part of the current building is the Moorish-style roof, which can be seen in the prolongation of the choir towards the side naves; the church was rebuilt in 1720, with the patronage of with Gertrudis de la Peña, Marquesa de las Torres de Rada, designed by Pedro de Arrieta. Over time, the Jesuits embellished the church and their living quarters with paintings and other ornaments, gathering a large collection of religious art. In 1767, the Jesuits were expelled from all Spanish-held lands; the La Profesa Church, along with a number of other Jesuit properties in the city, were turned over to the vice-royalty. The church and temple, under construction at the time were granted to the priests of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri; the name of the church was changed to San José el Real. However, the church continued to be popularly known as "La Profesa."Decades the Jesuits were able to return to Mexico.
When the Jesuits regained possession of the church, a building called the "Casa de Ejercicios" was begun and shortly thereafter expanded by Manuel Tolsá, who redecorated the interior of the church. All this work was finished in 1802. In 1855, the declaration of the Immaculate Conception as a Roman Catholic church dogma the previous year was celebrated here, an event commemorated by an oil painting, now at the National Museum of History in Chapultepec; the Reform Laws of 1861 forced the abandonment of La Profesa's monastery, demolished in 1862 to make way for 5 de Mayo Street. The Casa de Ejercicios was temporarily converted into the Hotel Colon. In 1914, a severe fire destroyed the cupola paintings done by Pelegrí Clavé, who had painted the seven sacraments, "The Triumph of the Holy Cross" on the eight sides of the cupola; the only work saved from that fire was done in 1861 which represents the blessing of Creation situated in the door of the small lantern at the top of the cupola. In the century, this church was the scene of meetings of historians and other researchers during the beatification process of Juan Diego.
The church was declared a historical monument in 1932 and again in 1980. The church building has seen a number of works to correct damage from its sinking into the soft soil of Mexico City and has had its facade on Madero Street restored, it is favored by elegant weddings since it is half a block from the Casino Español. The building that stands today is the church, rebuilt in 1720 by Pedro de Arrieta to replace the church nearly destroyed by the 1629 flood. All that remains of the original 16th-century church is a portion of the roof; the new version mixes elements of 17th and 18th century architecture, for this reason, La Profesa is considered to be a precursor of much of the architecture of Mexico City in the 18th century. Elements present in this church that would mark 18th century works include an octagonal window in the choir area with multiple mouldings to decorate it and a recessed facade with steps leading up to the main portal. Older elements include the Latin cross floor plan with an octagonal cupola.
The recessed facade is covered in tezontle with fillets of cantera. Above the main portal there is a relief done in cantera which depicts the apparition of a cross-bearing
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian polymath, naturalist and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt. Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring. Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in the Americas and describing them for the first time from a modern scientific point of view, his description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined. Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multivolume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture.
This important work motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity. He was the first person to describe the phenomenon and cause of human-induced climate change, in 1800 and again in 1831, based on observations generated during his travels. Alexander von Humboldt was born in Berlin in Prussia on 14 September 1769, he was baptized with the Duke of Brunswick serving as godfather. Humboldt's father, Alexander Georg von Humboldt, belonged to a prominent Pomeranian family, although not one of the titled gentry, a major in the Prussian Army, who had served with the Duke of Brunswick. At age 42, Alexander Georg was rewarded for his services in the Seven Years' War with the post of royal chamberlain, he profited from the contract to lease state lotteries and tobacco sales. He first married the daughter of Prussian General Adjutant Schweder. In 1766, Alexander Georg married Maria Elisabeth Colomb, a well-educated woman and widow of Baron Hollwede, with whom she had a son. Alexander Georg and Maria Elisabeth had three children, a daughter, who died young, two sons and Alexander.
Her first-born son and Alexander's half-brother, was something of a ne'er do well, not mentioned in the family history. Alexander Georg died in 1779, leaving the brothers Humboldt in the care of their distant mother, she did have high ambitions for Alexander and his older brother Wilhelm, hiring excellent tutors, who were Enlightenment thinkers, including Kantian physician Marcus Herz and botanist Karl Ludwig Willdenow, who became one of the most important botanists in Germany. Humboldt's mother expected them to become civil servants of the Prussian state; the money Baron Holwede left to Alexander's mother became, after her death, instrumental in funding Alexander's explorations, contributing more than 70% of his private income. Due to his youthful penchant for collecting and labeling plants and insects, Alexander received the playful title of "the little apothecary". Marked for a political career, Alexander studied finance for six months in 1787 at the University of Frankfurt, which his mother might have chosen less for its academic excellence than its closeness to their home in Berlin.
On 25 April 1789, he matriculated at Göttingen known for the lectures of C. G. Heyne and anatomist J. F. Blumenbach, his brother Wilhelm was a student at Göttingen, but they did not interact much, since their intellectual interests were quite different. His vast and varied interests were by this time developed. At Gottingen, he met Georg Forster, a naturalist, with Captain James Cook on his second voyage. Humboldt traveled with Forster in Europe; the two traveled to England, Humboldt's first sea voyage, the Netherlands, France. In England, he met Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, who had traveled with Captain Cook; the scientific friendship between Banks and Humboldt lasted until Banks's death in 1820, the two shared botanical specimens for study. Banks mobilized his scientific contacts in years to aid Humboldt's work. Humboldt's scientific excursion up the Rhine resulted in his 1790 treatise Mineralogische Beobachtungen über einige Basalte am Rhein. Humboldt's passion for travel was of long standing.
Humboldt's talents were devoted to the purpose of preparing himself as a scientific explorer. With this emphasis, he studied commerce and foreign languages at Hamburg, geology at Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg in 1791 under A. G. Werner, leader of the Neptunist school of geology. C. Loder. X. von Zach and J. G. Köhler. At Freiberg, he met a number of men who were to prove important to him in his career, including Spaniard Manuel del Rio, who became director of the School of Mines the crown established in Mexico. During this period, his brother Wilhelm married. Humboldt graduated from the Freiberg School of Mines in 1792 and was appointed to a Prussian government position in the Department of Mines as an inspector in Bayreuth and the Fichtel mountains. Humboldt was excellent at his job, with production of gold ore in his first year outstripping the previous eight years. During his period as a mine inspector, Humbo
Mexico City
Mexico City, or the City of Mexico, is the capital of Mexico and the most populous city in North America. Mexico City is one of the most important financial centres in the Americas, it is located in the Valley of Mexico, a large valley in the high plateaus in the center of Mexico, at an altitude of 2,240 meters. The city has 16 boroughs; the 2009 population for the city proper was 8.84 million people, with a land area of 1,485 square kilometers. According to the most recent definition agreed upon by the federal and state governments, the population of Greater Mexico City is 21.3 million, which makes it the largest metropolitan area of the Western Hemisphere, the eleventh-largest agglomeration, the largest Spanish-speaking city in the world. Greater Mexico City has a GDP of $411 billion in 2011, making Greater Mexico City one of the most productive urban areas in the world; the city was responsible for generating 15.8% of Mexico's GDP, the metropolitan area accounted for about 22% of total national GDP.
If it were an independent country, in 2013, Mexico City would be the fifth-largest economy in Latin America, five times as large as Costa Rica and about the same size as Peru. Mexico’s capital is both the oldest capital city in the Americas and one of two founded by Native Americans, the other being Quito, Ecuador; the city was built on an island of Lake Texcoco by the Aztecs in 1325 as Tenochtitlan, completely destroyed in the 1521 siege of Tenochtitlan and subsequently redesigned and rebuilt in accordance with the Spanish urban standards. In 1524, the municipality of Mexico City was established, known as México Tenochtitlán, as of 1585, it was known as Ciudad de México. Mexico City was the political and financial center of a major part of the Spanish colonial empire. After independence from Spain was achieved, the federal district was created in 1824. After years of demanding greater political autonomy, residents were given the right to elect both a Head of Government and the representatives of the unicameral Legislative Assembly by election in 1997.
Since, the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution has controlled both of them. The city has several progressive policies, such as abortion on request, a limited form of euthanasia, no-fault divorce, same-sex marriage. On January 29, 2016, it ceased to be the Federal District, is now known as Ciudad de México, with a greater degree of autonomy. A clause in the Constitution of Mexico, prevents it from becoming a state, as it is the seat of power in the country, unless the capital of the country were relocated elsewhere; the city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan was founded by the Mexica people in 1325. The old Mexica city, now referred to as Tenochtitlan was built on an island in the center of the inland lake system of the Valley of Mexico, which it shared with a smaller city-state called Tlatelolco. According to legend, the Mexicas' principal god, indicated the site where they were to build their home by presenting a golden eagle perched on a prickly pear devouring a rattlesnake. Between 1325 and 1521, Tenochtitlan grew in size and strength dominating the other city-states around Lake Texcoco and in the Valley of Mexico.
When the Spaniards arrived, the Aztec Empire had reached much of Mesoamerica, touching both the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. After landing in Veracruz, Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés advanced upon Tenochtitlan with the aid of many of the other native peoples, arriving there on November 8, 1519. Cortés and his men marched along the causeway leading into the city from Iztapalapa, the city's ruler, Moctezuma II, greeted the Spaniards. Cortés put Moctezuma under house arrest. Tensions increased until, on the night of June 30, 1520 – during a struggle known as "La Noche Triste" – the Aztecs rose up against the Spanish intrusion and managed to capture or drive out the Europeans and their Tlaxcalan allies. Cortés regrouped at Tlaxcala; the Aztecs thought the Spaniards were permanently gone, they elected a new king, Cuitláhuac, but he soon died. Cortés began a siege of Tenochtitlan in May 1521. For three months, the city suffered from the lack of food and water as well as the spread of smallpox brought by the Europeans.
Cortés and his allies landed their forces in the south of the island and fought their way through the city. Cuauhtémoc surrendered in August 1521; the Spaniards razed Tenochtitlan during the final siege of the conquest. Cortés first settled in Coyoacán, but decided to rebuild the Aztec site to erase all traces of the old order, he did not establish a territory under his own personal rule, but remained loyal to the Spanish crown. The first Spanish viceroy arrived in Mexico City fourteen years later. By that time, the city had again become a city-state, having power that extended far beyond its borders. Although the Spanish preserved Tenochtitlan's basic layout, they built Catholic churches over the old Aztec temples and claimed the imperial palaces for themselves. Tenochtitlan was renamed "Mexico"; the city had been the capital of the Aztec empire and in the colonial era, Mexico City became the capital of New Spain. The viceroy of Mexico or vice-king lived in the viceregal palace on Zócalo; the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral, the seat of the Archbishopric of New Spain, was const
Cádiz
Cádiz is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the Province of Cádiz, one of eight which make up the autonomous community of Andalusia. Cádiz, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe, with archaeological remains dating to 3100 years, was founded by the Phoenicians, it has been a principal home port of the Spanish Navy since the accession of the Spanish Bourbons in the 18th century. The city is a member of the Most Ancient European Towns Network, it is the site of the University of Cádiz. Situated on a narrow slice of land surrounded by the sea‚ Cádiz is, in most respects, a Andalusian city with a wealth of attractive vistas and well-preserved historical landmarks; the older part of Cádiz within the remnants of the city walls is referred to as the Old Town. It is characterized by the antiquity of its various quarters, among them El Pópulo, La Viña, Santa María, which present a marked contrast to the newer areas of town. While the Old City's street plan consists of narrow winding alleys connecting large plazas, newer areas of Cádiz have wide avenues and more modern buildings.
In addition, the city is dotted with numerous parks where exotic plants flourish, including giant trees brought to Spain by Columbus from the New World. Little remains of the Phoenician language, but numismatic inscriptions record that they knew the site as a Gadir or Agadir, meaning "The Wall", "The Compound", or "The Stronghold". Borrowed by the Berber languages, this became the agadir common in North African place names; the Carthaginians continued to use this name and all subsequent names have derived from it. The Greek cothon refers to a Carthaginian type of fortified basin that can be seen at ancient sites such as Motya. Attic Greek sources hellenized Gadir as tà Gádeira, neuter plural. Herodotus, using Ionic Greek, transcribed it a little differently, as Gḗdeira; as in Stephanus of Byzantium's notes on the writings of Eratosthenes, the name is given in the feminine singular form as hè Gadeíra. In Latin, the city was known as its Roman colony as Augusta Urbs Iulia Gaditana. In Arabic, the Latin name became Qādis.
The Spanish demonym for people and things from Cádiz is gaditano. In English, the name is pronounced variously; when the accent is on the second syllable, it is pronounced but, when the accent is on the first syllable, it may be pronounced as, as, or as. In Spanish, the accent is always on the first syllable but, while the usual pronunciation in Spain is, the local dialect says, or instead. More some English speakers may attempt to pronounce it as the Spanish to the British version of "Ibiza", leading to pronunciations of Cádiz with /s/ or /θ/ instead of /z/, but keeping the English vowels and the strong /d/. According to a 2016 census estimate, the population of the city of Cádiz was 118,919, that of its metropolitan area was 629,054. Cádiz is the seventeenth-largest Spanish city. In recent years, the city's population has declined. Between 1995 and 2006, it lost more than 14,000 residents, a decrease of 9%. Among the causes of this loss of population is the peculiar geography of Cádiz. There is a pronounced shortage of land to be developed.
The city has little vacant land, a high proportion of its housing stock is low in density. The older quarters of Cádiz are full of buildings that, because of their age and historical significance, are not eligible for urban renewal. Two other physical factors tend to limit the city's population, it is impossible to increase the amount of land available for building by reclaiming land from the sea. Because Cádiz is built on a sandspit, it is a costly proposition to sink foundations deep enough to support the high-rise buildings that would allow for a higher population density; as it stands, the city's skyline is not different from in the Middle Ages. A 17th-century watchtower, the Tavira Tower, still commands a panoramic view of the city and the bay despite its modest 45 meters height. Cádiz is the provincial capital with the highest rate of unemployment in Spain. This, tends to depress the population level. Young Gaditanos, those between 18 and 30 years of age, have been migrating to other places in Spain, as well as to other places in Europe and the Americas.
The population younger than twenty years old is only 20.58% of the total, the population older than sixty-five is 21.67%, making Cádiz one of the most aged cities in all of Spain. The population distribution of the municipality is uneven. In its inhabited areas, Cádiz is one of the most densely populated cities in Europe; the uninhabited Zona Franca industrial area, Bay of Cádiz Port Area, Bay of Cádiz Natural Park occupy 63
