Cosmovitral Jardín Botánico

The building that now houses the Cosmovitral began as Toluca's Mercado 16 de Septiembre, raised under the Porfiriato as the centenary of Independence approached. Its first stone was laid on 22 February 1909, and sources place construction between 1909 and 1910. The design is credited to engineer Manuel Arratia, a native of Zumpango, while the metal framework is attributed to the Fundidora de Monterrey. Sources differ on when the market actually opened, one of them giving 1933.

The market served its purpose until 1975, when it was decided to convert the building into a botanical garden, a project that the Spanish-language encyclopedia associates with Governor Jorge Jiménez Cantú and mayor Yolanda Sentiés de Ballesteros. The artist Leopoldo Flores Valdés, from the State of Mexico, spent a year designing the stained glass, and a team of around sixty craftsmen then executed it over three years in workshops set up in Lerma. The Cosmovitral opened to the public on 5 July 1980 and is now run by the State of Mexico's Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

The building is an Art Nouveau hall with a metal structure, whose large openings, originally designed to light the market, were turned into stained-glass windows. Sources give an overall area of about 3,000 m², one of them claiming more than 3,200 m². The stained-glass work involved roughly 75 tonnes of metal framework, 45 tonnes of blown glass and 25 tonnes of lead.

The stained glass itself comprises around 500,000 glass fragments grouped into some 30,000 lead-set sections, in 28 colours imported from Italy, Germany, France, Belgium, Japan, Canada and the United States. The number of panels varies by source (48 or 71 modules). Leopoldo Flores developed the theme of the duality of the universe: the opposition of day and night, woman and man, good and evil, with a large human figure set within a central circle whose proportions refer to the golden ratio.

According to the record of Mexico's Cultural Information System, the indoor garden gathers more than 400 plant species from Central and South America, Africa and Asia. The plants named in the sources include water lilies, roses, Mexican orchids, birds of paradise, cypresses and ferns.

The collection was assembled when the market was converted and forms the living setting for the glasswork, whose colours filter the light above the foliage. The place was founded as a botanical garden on 5 July 1980, and guided tours are offered.

The Cosmovitral stands in the centre of Toluca de Lerdo, at the corner of Juárez and Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada streets. A visit is as much a museum experience as a garden walk: it is worth allowing enough time to follow the paths and study the details of the stained glass, in particular the large central figure and the owls and eagles that stage the struggle between night and day.

Natural light is essential to the effect of the glass, so a time of day when the sun shines on the windows is a good choice. Guided tours are available. Because the building sits in the heart of the city, it combines easily with a walk through central Toluca, and the anniversary of the opening on 5 July is regularly recalled in the local press.