The Military Historical Museum of La Planicie was the seat of Venezuela’s first military academy, resulting from the onset of professionalization of the national militia, impelled by Cipriano Castro and Juan Vicente Gómez. On the La Planicie plateau overlooking the southwest area of the city, it was built with the contest-winning project by Chataing and Rosales Bosque during Cipriano Castro’s government. Opened in 1910, the largest Military Academy in Latin America is an eclectic expression of several architectural styles current in military building types of the time. Its shape, resulting from a series of volumes attached to each other, is conceived with the aesthetic categories of proportion, order and symmetry. Its rectangular layout, with a large central courtyard for parades and formations is typical of fortified buildings of military defense. For many years, it was traditional in Caracas to hear the cannon salvos from La Planicie announcing the arrival of the new year, as well as the opening and closing of the National Congress sessions and com-memorating historic national holidays. The Museum currently houses military objects, weapons, uniforms and articles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the remains of Hugo Chávez.