San Juan de Letrán station

Neighbouring stations

• 8Line 8Bellas Artes ← San Juan de Letrán → Salto del Agua

The story behind the icon

The station image is the silhouette of the Torre Latinoamericana.

This is the name by which part of the Eje Central Lázaro Cárdenas in the Historic Centre of Mexico City was known some years ago, itself taken from one of the five patriarchal basilicas of Rome. The basilica of Saint John Lateran is the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome. It has been called the mother and head of all the churches of Rome and of the world.

The Torre Latinoamericana is one of the emblems of the city, standing on the Eje Central and Calle Madero; this building can be seen from any point in the centre and from various quarters of the city. It has 43 floors and two basements, a steel structure and a television tower 40 metres high above the roof. Dr Leonardo Zeevaert created and designed the foundations for this building and acted as consulting engineer in the calculation of the steel structure, where the concept of controlled flexibility was used for the first time, studying its behaviour from a dynamic point of view. Later he acted as consulting engineer and construction inspector for the foundations and the steel structure. In this building he applied his method for finding the resonance periods of the soil.