As this building has sunk into the ground, its patrons descend to cross its threshold. The work of the Italian architect Adamo Boari, this national opera house clad with Carrara marble and topped wit a triple dome in bronze was intended to be the cultural showpiece of the regime of Porfirio Diaz but the Revolution interrupted construction.

Although begun in 1904, it was not opened until 1934, after an audacious transformation of its decoration. Its romantic nymphs and odalisques made way for jaguar warriors on the keystones and serpents on the friezes underlying the arches. Its resolutely art deco interior, with geometrical red marble and futuristic lamps, is straight out of the movie Metropolis casting diffuse light on the new-Aztec copper masks on the staircase.