National Auditorium
Mexico's largest concert hall, on Paseo de la Reforma, seating close to ten thousand people.
The auditorium was commissioned in 1948 by President Miguel Aleman, first as an arena for equestrian events, and opened as the Auditorio Municipal in June 1952. Pedro Ramirez Vazquez and Ramiro Gonzalez de Sordo soon reworked the scheme for wider use, and it reopened as the Auditorio Nacional in 1955. For four decades it served as a general-purpose arena, hosting circuses, trade fairs and the gymnastics events of the 1968 Olympic Games.
By the late 1980s the building was considered outdated, and Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon and Abraham Zabludovsky were asked to rebuild it. They kept much of the original riveted iron structure, raised the entrance to an open plaza and reopened the hall on 6 September 1991. It now seats close to ten thousand and stages concerts, dance, opera relays, theatre, film with live orchestra and family shows, drawing about 1.5 million people a year. The smaller Lunario opened alongside it in 2004.
Highlights
- Auditorium seating close to 10,000, one of the largest in Latin America
- Gonzalez de Leon and Zabludovsky's 1991 rebuild on the original iron frame
- Commissioned artworks by Juan Soriano, Vicente Rojo and Manuel Felguerez
- Live opera relays from the Metropolitan Opera, New York
