National Capitol

In front of you rises the National Capitol, seat of the Colombian Congress. If it looks restrained, with no dome or towers, that is no accident: it is the result of almost eight decades of building work interrupted by civil wars.

1The square that saw it all

From the founding of Santafé, this was the Plaza Mayor: market, bullring, stage for processions and place of punishment. On its south side stood the Royal Audiencia, the jail and the palace of the viceroys, destroyed by fire in 1786.

During the Spanish Reconquest, the square was also a place of execution. On 14 November 1817, Policarpa Salavarrieta, known as La Pola, who spied for the patriots, was shot here along with other prisoners. Today she is one of the great symbols of independence.

2Eight decades of work

President Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera commissioned the project from the Danish architect Thomas Reed, and the foundation stone was laid on 20 July 1848. War halted the work again and again. Pietro Cantini, Mariano Santamaría and the Frenchman Gaston Lelarge all took their turn; Lelarge proposed a great central dome. It was never built: a horizontal building that would not compete in height with the cathedral was preferred. The Capitol was finally inaugurated on 7 August 1926.

Between the first stone and the inauguration, 78 years went by: the building sums up, in stone, the turbulent politics of nineteenth-century Colombia.

In April 1948 it was hosting the Ninth Pan-American Conference when the Bogotazo broke out after Gaitán's assassination.

3What to look for

• The central colonnade, with rows of Ionic columns that let you glimpse the inner courtyard.
• The griffins on the cornice, the solution chosen instead of a dome.
• The Colombian coat of arms on the inner pediment, visible between the columns.