At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, the capital of New Spain, with its 137,000 inhabitants, was the most populous city in the New World. It boasted a cathedral, baronial halls like the Casa de los Azulejos, and buildings to house new industries (tobacco factories) and new institutions like the College of Mines and the Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos with its collection of casts sent by Madrid government. The works of urbanization ordered by the viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa and his successors made the city cleaner and more beautiful.


The viceroys paved the streets, laid pavements, and drained sewage and used water. A public service provided street lighting, as in the time of Moctezuma. Hence México became much healthier, safer and more splendid than in the preceding century.Along the Zócalo in Mexico City (formerly the Plaza Mayor), the largest cathedral in México displays its beautiful, mostly baroque facade of grey stone between two squat neo-classical towers.


Begun in 1573, after the cabildo (municipal council) presented a request to Philip II, king of Spain, begging him to grant permission to erect a new cathedral worthy of the opulence of the New World, it was not until 1813 that it was completely finished.


This cathedral replaced the excessively modest episcopal church built just after the conquest with materials taken from the pyramid of Huitzilopochtli, on a site located a little to the north-west of the present cathedral. The baroque part of the facade has three doors flanked by columns and surmounted by niches with carved ornamentation . All the differences of style in the cathedral bear witness to fact that its construction was the work of several generations of architects