Paseo de la Reforma (literally "Promenade of the Reform") is a wide avenue that runs diagonally across the heart of Mexico City.

It was designed at the behest of Emperor Maximilian by Ferdinand von Rosenzweig during the era of the Second Mexican Empire and modeled after the great boulevards of Europe,[1] such as the Ringstraße in Vienna and the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

The planned grand avenue was to link the National Palace with the imperial residence, Chapultepec Castle, which was then on the southwestern edge of town.

Today, the Reforma is filled with tourist attractions, luxury restaurants and hotels, office buildings, public art exhibitions, and new construction.

The Angel of Independence roundabout is an iconic representative of the city, and is the main place of the celebration of victories of the national football team, such as during World Cups.

One such project type was the creation of a series of boulevards, imitating European ones such as the Ringstraße in Vienna, or the ones under construction at that time in Paris under Napoleon III, lined with grand monuments.

The route and the construction of six boulevards radiating outward from the Zócalo, Mexico City's main square, was assigned to a committee of prominent architects (Carl Gangolf and Ramón Rodríguez Arangoiti) and artists (Felipe Sojo, Miguel Noreña, Santiago Rebull).

After a competition, it was assigned to the brothers Juan and Ramón Agea under the supervision of the Ministry of Development, Colonization, Industry and Commerce, headed by Luis Robles Pezuela.

Of the original 3.15 km-long project, only one part was completed between 1864 and 1865, a road 20 meters wide, which was enormous for those days, without a central median, only a few areas on the side reserved for horses to rest.

[6][7] The Paseo did not include bridges or similar constructions to cross the canals and rivers which then flowed near what is now Colonia Tabacalera (then Hacienda de la Teja).

By 1870 it had tree-lined pedestrian medians between "el Caballito" and the Palm Tree Roundabout, carried out by the Ministry of Development under Francisco P. Herrera.

The French style of the area was epitomized at the time by frequent comparisons of Paseo de la Reforma to the Champs Elysées in Paris.

As president, he fully supported the embellishment of the Paseo de la Reforma with statuary representing Mexico's heroes through its history, creating "monuments worth of the culture of this city, and whose sights remind of the heroism with which the nation fought against the Conquest in the sixteenth century and for the Independence and Reform in the present.

[10] The major intersections of the broad avenue were traffic roundabouts (glorietas) where statues commemorating persons and events in Mexican history were placed over the next decades.

It included the maintenance of the existent gardens and the creation of new ones, the intensive cleaning and sweeping of streets and sidewalks, the construction of new pink quarry sidewalks and benches, the creation of access bays in the Zoo, lake and Modern Art Museum for touristic and school buses, the installation of new lighting, the moving of the monument to Cuauhtémoc to the crossing of Avenida de los Insurgentes and Paseo de la Reforma, the construction of prism shaped concrete structures in the median which also have plants and flowers, the promotion of Reforma as a cultural walk organizing different expositions along the avenue sidewalks, and the maintenance of the monuments, sculptures and fountains.

In 2019, American fast food chain Shake Shack opened its first restaurant in Mexico on Reforma in front of the Angel of Independence.

Although there is no single block that has kept its former architecture, a couple of scattered buildings show the opulence enjoyed by the elites during Porfirio Díaz' regime.

Others with name recognition in Mexican history are Fray Servando Teresa de Mier (1765–1827), Carlos Maria de Bustamante (1774–1848), historian; José María Luis Mora (1794–1850); Miguel Ramos Arizpe (1775–1843), "father of Mexican federalism"; Andrés Quintana Roo (1787–1851), after whom a state is named; Miguel Lerdo de Tejada (1812–1861), prominent politician in the liberal Reform; Melchor Ocampo (1814–1861), radical liberal, murdered during the War of the Reform; Guillermo Prieto (1818–1897), prominent journalist; Gabino Barreda (1818–1881), Positivist philosopher and educator; Ignacio Manuel Altamirano (1834–1893), intellectual and writer of indigenous origins; and Vicente Riva Palacio (1832–1896), liberal general, writer, and politician, who died in Spanish exile.

History is written by the victors, so that absent from the array of liberal heroes are statues of prominent Mexican conservatives Antonio López de Santa Anna, general and president of Mexico for much of the early 19th century; and Lucas Alamán, historian and politician.