National Palace

This guide to the National Palace in Mexico City centers on Diego Rivera's 1929 commission to paint the government's own grand staircase, a decision that got him expelled from the Communist Party the same year for working for a government it considered a class enemy. It follows the mural, The Epic of the Mexican People, painted between 1929 and 1935 across roughly 4,800 square feet, tracing its climb from Aztec life before the conquest through independence and reform toward Rivera's own century. Notice the eleven panels he planned for the floor above and never finished.