Plaza Murillo: The Cathedral Basilica, Palacio Quemado and Clock of the South

Laid out in 1558 by colonial urban planner Juan Gutierrez Paniagua on the northern terrace above the Choqueyapu River, Plaza Murillo has served for more than four and a half centuries as the stage of Bolivian political history. Known during the Spanish viceroyalty as the Plaza Mayor and Plaza de Armas, the square was renamed on 3 February 1902 in honour of independence hero Pedro Domingo Murillo, who proclaimed the La Paz revolution here on 16 July 1809, igniting the Spanish American Wars of Independence, before being captured and hanged on the square by royalist forces in January 1810. Pair your visit here with neighbouring Calle Jaen and Plaza San Francisco.

Palacio Quemado (1853) and the Colorados de Bolivia Guard

On the southern corner of the square stands the whitewashed neoclassical Palacio de Gobierno, universally known across Bolivia as the Palacio Quemado ("Burnt Palace"). Completed in 1853 after eight years of construction, the presidential palace earned its enduring moniker on 20 March 1875 when insurgents attempting to overthrow President Tomas Frias hurled flaming torches onto its roof, gutting the interior. Rebuilt in the 1880s and toweringly backed since August 2018 by the 29-storey glass-and-concrete Casa Grande del Pueblo, its main portal is guarded by sentries of the historic Regimiento Colorados de Bolivia wearing their nineteenth-century red wool tunics, white breeches, and high shako caps commemorating the 1880 Battle of Alto de la Alianza.

Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace (1835-1925)

Immediately beside the Palacio Quemado rises the monumental granite-and-sandstone Catedral Basilica de Nuestra Senora de La Paz. After cracks forced the demolition of the earlier 1692 colonial cathedral in 1831, construction of the present five-nave neoclassical basilica began on 24 March 1835. Because the building stands atop a steep river terrace, its foundations and subterranean crypts descend several storeys below street level toward Calle Potosi. Inaugurated in 1925 for the first centenary of the Republic of Bolivia, with its two lofty lateral bell towers completed in 1989 for the visit of Pope John Paul II, the cathedral's left side chapel houses the marble sarcophagus of Marshal Andres de Santa Cruz (1792 to 1865), Supreme Protector of the Peru-Bolivian Confederation, flanked by a ceremonial honour guard.

The Plurinational Legislative Assembly and the "Clock of the South"

Occupying the eastern flank of Plaza Murillo on the site of a seventeenth-century Jesuit college and the former Loreto Convent (where Bolivia's early republican congresses sat), the domed neoclassical Palacio Legislativo was inaugurated in 1905. Look closely at the clock face crowning its central cupola: in June 2014, the government reversed the numerals and gears into the "Clock of the South" (Reloj del Sur), whose numbers 1 through 12 are arranged in mirror order and whose hands turn counter-clockwise to invite citizens of the Southern Hemisphere to reflect on indigenous time and identity.