Chapultepec Castle

Chapultepec Castle stands atop Chapultepec Hill in Mexico City, begun in 1785 under the Spanish colonial viceroy Bernardo de Galvez as a residence, though construction was interrupted and the building passed through several later uses, including a military academy, before Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico and Empress Carlota renovated it as an imperial residence in the 1860s during the brief Second Mexican Empire. The castle later served as the official residence of Mexican presidents for much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, until President Lazaro Cardenas converted it into a public museum in 1939. It is one of very few genuine royal castles in the Americas, and its European-influenced architecture and hilltop siting are unusual within Mexican civic architecture, commanding wide views over Mexico City and the surrounding Chapultepec Park, one of the largest city parks in the Western Hemisphere. The castle also holds symbolic significance in Mexican history as the site of the 1847 Battle of Chapultepec, where a group of young military cadets, remembered as the Ninos Heroes, died defending it during the Mexican-American War.