Gran Hotel Ciudad de México

Overview

The Gran Hotel Ciudad de México, overlooking the Zócalo in the heart of the UNESCO Historic Centre, shelters one of the great Art Nouveau interiors of the Americas. Its most celebrated feature is a soaring Tiffany stained-glass ceiling — one of the largest Tiffany-style stained-glass ceilings in the world — that crowns a seven-storey atrium of gilded iron balconies. Completed in 1899 in the Porfiriato style, the hotel was enriched in 1908 with the Gruber-designed glass canopy, which transforms natural light into a kaleidoscope of amber, gold, and cobalt across the atrium floor.

Architecture

The building was designed by the engineers Daniel Garza and Gonzalo Garita and inaugurated in 1899 as the Centro Mercantil department store. The façade on Avenida 16 de Septiembre is an exuberant exercise in French Beaux-Arts ornament, with cartouches, pilasters, and large windows. Inside, the atrium rises through seven floors of wrought-iron balconies in sinuous Art Nouveau profiles. The structural cage is entirely of iron, recalling the grands magasins of Paris and Brussels, while the decorative vocabulary is heavier, more Porfiriato in its abundance of gilded and enamelled surfaces.

History

Built as a department store — the Centro Mercantil — in 1899, the structure was converted to a hotel in the early twentieth century. The defining moment came in 1908, when Jacques Gruber, the Nancy master responsible for the stained glass of the Brasserie Excelsior, designed the vast stained-glass canopy that was installed above the atrium. Located steps from the Catedral Metropolitana and the Palacio Nacional, the hotel occupies the most symbolically charged urban block in the country.

Interior

The atrium is the hotel's singular experience. The Gruber ceiling panels — peacocks, tropical foliage, geometric borders in deep blues, ambers, and greens — filter daylight into the entire vertical stack of the building. From the ground floor, guests look straight up through seven rings of gilded iron balcony to the glass canopy above. The lifts, original cage-style in wrought iron, still operate within the atrium volume. The bar and restaurant on the ground floor preserve much of the original Porfiriato furniture and the elaborately tiled floor that was laid at the hotel conversion.

Visiting

The Gran Hotel is a working hotel open to the public for meals, drinks, and lobby visits. The rooftop terrace offers unmatched views over the Zócalo and the cathedral. Restaurant and bar are open daily; no admission charge to enter the lobby and admire the atrium. Reservations recommended for the rooftop restaurant on weekends.

Getting There

Address: Avenida 16 de Septiembre 82, Centro Histórico, Mexico City, Mexico. Metro Zócalo (line 2) exits directly onto the plaza, a one-minute walk. Metrobús Eje Central and multiple urban bus routes serve the Centro Histórico.

In the Area

The Zócalo is surrounded by the Catedral Metropolitana, the Palacio Nacional with Diego Rivera's great murals, and the Templo Mayor archaeological site. The Palacio de Bellas Artes — designed by Adamo Boari and completed in 1934 — is three blocks west and houses the finest collection of Mexican muralism in the country.