Torre Ejecutiva Pemex
A 51-story oil tower built to outlast earthquakes — and it did, on 19 September 1985.
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Mexico City sits on a drained lake bed that turns seismic waves lethal. Pemex engineered around that: 164 concrete-and-steel piles driven 35 metres into firm ground, plus 90 shock-absorbers inside an x-braced frame rated for 8.5 on the Richter scale. The 211-metre tower held Mexico's height record for nearly 20 years and proved its engineering the year after opening when a magnitude 8.1 quake struck.
What to look for
- The x-braced exterior structure — the visible steel crosses are the earthquake-resistance system housing 90 shock-absorbers
- The large base plaza, which was built over an underground avenue but was never finished
- Torre Mayor on the skyline roughly 800 metres away — the 55-story tower that finally surpassed Pemex's height record in August 2003
Active Pemex headquarters with around 7,000 employees; view the tower and unfinished plaza from street level — no public interior access.
Torre Ejecutiva Pemex is one of 29 sights worth the detour in Mexico City, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Mexico City pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Mexico City
- Mexico City Metropolitan CathedralTwo hundred and forty years of construction, built on top of the Aztec sacred precinct — every generation of New Spain left something inside.
- National Museum of AnthropologyThe stone that defined how the world pictures the Aztec calendar is here — and 3.7 million people came to see it last year.
- Autódromo Hermanos RodríguezA 4.3 km ribbon of asphalt where two brothers gave their names — and their lives — to Mexican motorsport.
- Aztec Sun StoneA 24-tonne disc of olivine basalt that spent centuries buried under Mexico City's main square — then mounted on a cathedral wall — before anyone called it art.
- Palacio de Bellas ArtesStarted in 1904, halted by revolution and a sinking city, finished in 1934 — thirty years of delay show in every detail.
- University Olympic Stadium (Estadio Olímpico Universitario)This is where Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists to the sky in 1968 — one of sport's most charged political moments, in a stadium that held 83,700 people.