The National Museum of San Carlos is the bridge between New Spain and Mexico, where to be an artist was to be smart, intellectual and Baroque. Everything that happened at the Academy of San Fernando in Spain was transmitted to the artists of the Academy of San Carlos: how to see the landscape and represent the "Europeanizing" Mexico.
The now National Museum of San Carlos was built between 1798 and 1805, designed by Valencian Tolsá Manuel, who also built the towers of the Metropolitan Cathedral and the School of Mines in the nineteenth century. The building was commissioned by the second Marchioness of Selva Nevada for his son, the Count of Buenavista.
The venue is very special, with oval patio railing, large columns and concave convex spaces all with characteristic of the Baroque era. It has several replicas of Greco-Roman sculptures in plaster and marble sculptures of famous people in history. The museum preserves the collection of European art that was in Belles Artes, but it has also modernized and now exhibits new work for the public.