The epicenter of the country's political life since the Spanish Viceroyalty, the Presidential Palace is still the seat of the country's executive power, where every morning at 7 a.m. President Lopez Obrador holds an hour-and-a-half-long discussion with the press during the now-famous mañanera. Above the monumental central porch is the famous Liberty Bell, which priest Hidalgo rang for the first time in Dolores (Guanajuato state) on September 15, 1810, marking the start of the Mexican independence process. To commemorate this event, the bell is rung every year on this day at 11pm, while the current President of the Republic makes a public appearance on the balcony and launches the "Grito de Dolores". In 2010, a new exhibition space was inaugurated inside the complex: the Galería Nacional showcases institutional documents linked to the country's history.

It is here, above all, that you can see the frescoes Diego Rivera painted between 1929 and 1935, depicting more than two hundred historical figures and intended to exalt the national identity, from the glorious indigenous past to the struggles of workers and peasants reaching their peak during the Revolution.

His most important work is to be foundin the cube formed by the main staircase. On the north side of the staircase, Toltec culture is central, as representative of pre-Hispanic civilizations as a whole: the priest Quetzalcóatl teaches his people here, before being forced into exile to the east, a symbol of his predicted defeat at the hands of the Spaniards, mitigated by his rebirth as a feathered serpent.

On the central part of the staircase, dominated by the national eagle, the Spanish Conquest is represented by the capture of Tenochtitlan, and spiritual imposition takes the form of Franciscan and Dominican monks. This is followed by scenes from independent Mexico: the North American intervention of 1847; the second French intervention and the execution of Maximilian of Habsburg; the Liberal Reformation of 1857; the Revolution.

On the south wing of the staircase, Diego Rivera develops his favorite themes: the transition from a capitalist economy to a socialist society, where workers and peasants would take back their destiny confiscated by private ownership of the means of production, in the hands of national and international elites. Intellectual revenge against the power of the Church was symbolized by compulsory popular education for all. Under a dawning sun, Karl Marx himself shows a peasant, a worker and a soldier the ideal of equality that is the foundation of this new society.

Along the northern corridor, Rivera demonstrates his vast knowledge of pre-Hispanic cultures: the Tlatelolco market; the cultivation of cotton, cocoa, corn and the agave that produces pulque; the art of goldsmithing and featherwork; the payment of tribute in cash; the interpretation of oracles; the building of pyramids and the tracing of roads; the sacred rite of the voladores, originally from Veracruz.

The last space is located along the eastern corridor, known as "the landing of the Spaniards"; here, Rivera deals with the decadence and fall of pre-Hispanic civilizations, symbolized by miscegenation, disease, the introduction of European farm animals and a new production system characterized, among other things, by the arrival of African slaves.