Emperor Maximilian Memorial Chapel


The Emperor Maximilian Memorial Chapel is located on the Cerro de las Campanas in Querétaro City. It is located on the spot where Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico was executed 19 June 1867, and dedicated to his memory.

History

The hill on what was formerly the outskirts of Querétaro was the site of the end of the Second Mexican Empire. After being intercepted by the republican generals on May 15, 1867, the emperor, who had been besieged in the central city of Querétaro since March, surrendered on the mountain to General Mariano Escobedo. He was jailed on the mountain along with his two generals: Miguel Miramón, who had been the president of Mexico for most of 1859 and 1860, and Tomás Mejía Camacho, a Querétaro-born cavalry general. After a court-martial in Querétaro in which all three were sentenced to death, the sentence was carried out atop the hill on June 19, 1867, when Maximilian, Miramón and Mejía were executed.
The site was initially marked with piles of stone topped by crosses made of sticks; later, wooden crosses were placed on the site, which are now housed in the Cerro de las Campanas Museum. In 1886, the first monument was constructed on the site: three stone columns engraved with the names of the deceased, surrounded by iron bars supported by wooden columns, commissioned by Governor.
In 1900, after diplomatic relations between Mexico and Austria-Hungary resumed, the chapel was constructed on the site. Commissioned by Emperor Franz Joseph I in memory of his late brother and designed by architect Maximiliano Mitzel, the chapel was dedicated on April 10, 1901. It is designed in an eclectic Viennese style. The altar and altarpiece were made at the Querétaro School of Arts and Crafts, and the cross on the altar is taken from the SMS Novara, the ship on which Maximilian and his wife Charlotte of Belgium arrived in Mexico and which transported his remains back to Austria. He was laid to rest in the Imperial Crypt.
In January 2017, the Querétaro municipal government announced it would invest nearly 1 million pesos for the restoration and maintenance of the chapel.