The Monumental Axis () is the central and main avenue in

Brasília Brasília ( ; ) is the capital city, capital of Brazil and Federal District (Brazil), Federal District. Located in the Brazilian highlands in the country's Central-West Region, Brazil, Central-West region, it was founded by President Juscelino ...

's city design. The avenue begins on the

National Congress of Brazil The National Congress () is the legislative body of Brazil's federal government. Unlike the state legislative assemblies and Câmara Municipal, municipal chambers, the Congress is bicameral, composed of the Federal Senate (Brazil), Federal Sena ...

building and is considered part of the DF-002 road. Its first section is known as "Ministries Esplanade" (), as it is surrounded the buildings of government ministries. Many important government buildings, monuments, and memorials are located on the Monumental Axis. It is 16 kilometers long, beginning at the Rodoferroviária de Brasília, and ending at the Praça dos Três Poderes. It was created by Lúcio Costa during the construction of Brasília's Plano Piloto, connecting with the Highway Axis () at the Pilot Plan Bus Station. A common

urban legend Urban legend (sometimes modern legend, urban myth, or simply legend) is a genre of folklore concerning stories about an unusual (usually scary) or humorous event that many people believe to be true but largely are not. These legends can be e ...

persists that the Monumental Axis is the widest road in the world, where " 00 to 160cars can drive side by side". This is untrue, as the road consists of two avenues with six lanes on either side; a total of twelve lanes. However, the street has been featured in the

Guinness Book of Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a British reference book published annually, listi ...

as having the widest

median strip A median strip, central reservation, roadway median, or traffic median is the reserved area that separates opposing lanes of traffic on divided roadways such as divided highways, dual carriageways, controlled-access highway, freeways, and moto ...

of a

highway A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It includes not just major roads, but also other public roads and rights of way. In the United States, it is also used as an equivalent term to controlled-access highway, or ...

in the world. On April 21, 2008, a year before they formally broke up, the Mexican pop group

RBD RBD was a Mexican Latin pop group that gained popularity from Televisa's telenovela ''Rebelde'' (2004–2006). It was composed of Anahí, Dulce María, Maite Perroni, Alfonso Herrera, Christopher von Uckermann and Christian Chávez. The group ac ...

performed a free concert to a crowd of 500,000 on the Monumental Axis during Empezar Desde Cero Tour 2008. The show was to celebrate the 48th Anniversary of the founding of

. It was recorded and released on DVD with the title '' Live in Brasilia''. The crowd in attendance was the largest for which the group had performed.

History

The Monumental Axis emerged together with Lúcio Costa's urban planning proposal for the Pilot Plan, submitted to the competition committee for the Pilot Plan for the New Capital of Brazil in 1957. In the justification report, which was considered a decisive factor in his victory, Lúcio describes how he arrived at the design: in item 1, he makes a cross, according to him, a “primary gesture of those who mark a place or take possession of it”. Although the Eixo Monumental is known by the population as the “body of the airplane” due to a popular belief that the Plano Piloto was made in the shape of an aircraft, Lúcio stated in the report that he thought of a cross, and furthermore, the name Plano Piloto was not his creation, being a common term for general plans of modern urbanism. In the following sections, he curves one of the axes and justifies his choice for it to be the residential axis of the project, leaving the axis that remained straight as the “monumental axis of the system”, calling the avenue by its name for the first time. The two would have opposite and complementary functions: the residential axis would be for everyday, bucolic life, and the monumental axis, as the name suggests, would be for the great monumental palaces, which would symbolize the capital, the institutions and Brazil itself, and would therefore be more open and have a tourist vocation. After focusing on the details of the road axis, he returns to the monumental axis in item 9, where he describes the ideas for the Three Powers Square, the military and cultural sectors and the Esplanade of Ministries, thought of as a mall - an English term for wide avenues, like the Las Vegas Strip or the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Other inspirations cited in the document are London's Piccadilly Circus, New York's Times Square and Paris' Champs-Élysées Avenue.

Major sites on the Monumental Axis

Proposals for the area

Cultural Complex of the Republic

The complex, which currently consists of two buildings, the National Museum and the National Library, has plans to build a symphonic concert hall, an opera house, an auditorium for chamber music and possibly two other cultural buildings. However, few initiatives to complete the Complex have taken place to date.

References

External links