DDN
(former Plaza San Jacinto) East of Plaza Mayor, was created when the Dominicans established the Convent of San Jacinto (1591). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the convent was an education center. Today the plaza is surrounded by some colonial buildings, such as the Liberta-dor’s house and the Bolívarian Museum. At Alexander von Humboldt’s suggestion, it was equipped with a sundial in 1802. In 1809, the plaza became a marketplace. During the 1812 earthquake, the convent was destroyed: only the turret remained standing. The City Council took part of this land for its seat and the other for a public jail (1828), among whose prisoners was Antonio Leoca-dioGuzmán. Later, as president, his son Antonio Guzmán Blanco placed a statue there in his father’s honor, renaming it Plaza El Venezolano (1882). Shortly after he left power, the statue was removed, but it was put back in 1893, by order of JoaquínCrespo. The plaza ceased its function as a market in 1947. In 1967, a project to reform the plaza was commissioned to TomásSanabria, who placed a replica of the original sundial and suggested interconnecting it with a pedestrian system with emblematic buildings nearby. In 2010, on the Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, the «19 de abril de 1810». Monument was placed in the square, an aggressive red and black 47 m. height cylindrical obelisk.
DF-12
MIP