SANTO DOMINGO.- The National Palace, from where the President of the Dominican Republic works, was inaugurated on August 16, 1947, when the Government House was moved from the facilities where the Museum of the Royal Houses currently operates, in the Colonial City.
It is a building with an architectural mix, built on an area of 18,000 square meters, out of a total of 25,000 square meters that the land on which the symbolic work is erected possesses.
The Italian architect Guido D'Alessandro was in charge of designing the plans for the three-story building, at the request of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina. The groundbreaking ceremony took place on February 27, 1944, on the occasion of the centennial celebration of National Independence.
According to data contained on the official website, the cost of its construction amounted to 5 million pesos, excluding furniture and the land of the property
The Dominican government headquarters has more than 100 windows and doors placed one after the other to ensure natural ventilation, a detail that was due to the fact that at the time the use of air conditioning had not yet become widespread, according to the official website.
The Government House is supported by double-height columns. On the front is a sculpture of the goddess of justice, Themis, surrounded by people from society, including peasants and philosophers, whose Latin inscription means "The Law is the Law.".
Among the architectural styles that converge in the construction of the National Palace, one can appreciate the neoclassical, Italian Renaissance and Greco-Roman styles.
The dome
Photo: Presidency of the Republic.
Its majestic dome is the most significant part and its artwork, 18 meters in diameter by 34 meters high, combines different eras of fine arts, such as Victorian, Neoclassicism and Italian Renaissance.
It has a mezzanine and an artistic mural by the Spanish painter Aurelio Crosiet; it also has a balcony and 8 skylights, around the walls are the statues of the atlantes, in the center the dome has a Florentine style lamp, the largest in the National Palace, according to data from the Presidency of the Republic website.
