The Palace of Chapultepec, Mexico City

The Palace of Chapiltepec was most famously occupied by the Emperor Maximilian during his ill-fated reign in Mexico in the 1860s: 'On the Western outskirts of the city rose a wooded hill surrounded by a vast park, known to the Aztecs as Chapultepee, 'The Hill of the Grasshoppers'. Here Montezuma had built his summer palace, and on its ruins one of the more enterprising of the spanish Viceroys had erected a fortified castle which Maximilian immediately envisaged as another Miramar. He had brought his own architect from Europe...And by employing European engineers and recruiting hundreds of Indian workmen, a neglected fortress which had served as a military academy at the time of the Mexican-American War was rendered sufficiently habitable for him and Charlotte to move into one wing within eight days of their arrival. ...It was a far cry from the luxury of Monza and Miramar. But the inadequacy of the accomodation was more than compensated by the wonderful view from the terrace and the beauty of the park, which was the remains of a primaeval forest, overgrown with every form of parasitic life. The fabled gardens of Montezuma, the grottoes and follies of eighteenth century Viceroys, were lost in an enchanted wilderness inhabited by brilliant-plumaged birds and enormous butterflies.' (J. Haslip, Imperial Adventurer, Emperor Maximilian of Mexico and his Empress, London, 1974, pp. 249-50).