No building condenses Mexican history more completely. The Metropolitan Cathedral occupies the northern side of the Zocalo, directly beside the excavated Templo Mayor, and was raised with stone from the sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan that Spanish conquest had demolished. Construction stretched across centuries, and the result is a compendium of styles: Renaissance discipline in the lower orders, exuberant Baroque in the great altarpieces, Neoclassical restraint in the crowning stages of the towers. Inside, the film examines the Altar of the Kings with its dense gilded ornament, the choir, the chapels ringing the nave, and the vast organs. Structure is part of the story too: built on the drained lakebed of the valley, the cathedral has sunk and tilted, and the engineering works undertaken to stabilise it are among the most ambitious ever attempted on a historic building. Filmed in 4K with aerial coverage of the Zocalo.
