Republican Eagle Column
(Exedra Column)
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All day.
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This beautiful monument, an icon of our city, has a semicircular construction (Exedra) covered in pink quarry and a neoclassical architectural style. In its center stands an Ionic column with a Royal Iron Eagle, with its wings spread and devouring a snake posing on the top.
The history of its construction dates back to 1808, when the Municipal Council ordered its construction in honor of King Charles IV of Spain. However, it was completed when Charles IV had already abdicated in favor of his son Fernando VII. It is said that an image in the likeness of this new ruler was placed at the top of the column, and that it remained there until July 1821, when the Independence of Mexico ended. Although this information has not been confirmed, there is a lithograph by the German engineer and architect Karl Nebel (1802 - 1855), where a human figure appears on the base, but this is not indicative of its existence.
It is also unknown who was the executor of the column, since it is said that it was the work of Manuel Tolsá or Eduardo Tres Guerras, since he built a very similar one in the city of Celaya, Guanajuato.
This monument has survived over time, but not the groups that accompany it. In 1842, four metal swans were placed at its base, pouring streams of water into bowls. In 1895, Governor Rafael Arellano ordered a statue of Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla to be placed on the capital of the column, but the idea did not prosper.
In 1949, Jesús María Rodríguez was in charge of building the stands as an exedra, as well as the fountain dedicated to Manuel M. Ponce (in the front part of the column), placing a cauldron on the column as a base for a flagpole.
It was during the government of Lic. Rodolfo Landeros in 1985, that the square was redesigned in order to pedestrianize the surrounding streets, it was then that the sculpture "Republican Eagle" was placed at the top of the column, it is popularly thought that this is a work of the Aguacalientes sculptor Jesús F. Contreras, known as "The left arm of Mexican modernism", however this is completely wrong, even despite a quarry plaque placed in the place which declares this, the sculpture of the eagle is a copy of the same mold as the one you can admire at the top of the monument to La Raza in the country's capital, the work of the French sculptor George Gardet (1863-1939).
At the base of the column inside the arch formed by the steps of the exedra, are deposited the mortal remains of the first elected Governor of the state of Aguascalientes, Don José María Néstor Chávez Alonso, a liberal hero shot in 1864 at the Malpaso hacienda in the state of Zacatecas during the French intervention.
