Discover Plaza de Bolívar

Four buildings frame the plaza, each representing a different branch of Colombian authority. The Catedral Primada de Bogotá, Colombia's primatial cathedral, closes the square's eastern side -- a Neoclassical structure completed in 1823 on the site of the city's original, much humbler colonial-era churches. On the north side, the Palacio Liévano, built in French Second Empire style with distinctive mansard roofs, houses the office of Bogotá's mayor.

The Capitolio Nacional, seat of Colombia's Congress, occupies the plaza's south side -- a grand Neoclassical building whose construction began in 1846 and, delayed repeatedly by wars and funding gaps, wasn't completed until 1926. The Palacio de Justicia, home to the Supreme Court, sits opposite the cathedral; the current building, finished in 1999, replaced the original after its destruction in the 1985 siege.

At the center of it all stands Pietro Tenerani's bronze statue of Simón Bolívar, raised on a stone pedestal -- a comparatively modest monument dwarfed by the monumental civic architecture surrounding it on all four sides.