Chapultepec Castle Chapultepec Castle ( ) is located on top of Chapultepec Hill . The name " Chapultepec " stems from the Náhuatl word " chapoltepēc " which means " at the grasshopper ' s hill " . It is located in the middle of Chapultepec Park in Mexico City at a height of 2 , 325 meters ( 7 , 628 ft ) above sea level . The site of the hill was a sacred place for Aztecs , and the buildings atop it have served several purposes during its history , including that of Military Academy , Imperial residence , Presidential home , observatory , and presently , the Museo Nacional de Historia . It is one of only two Royal Castles in the Americas , as well as the only one in North America that was used to house sovereigns : the Mexican Emperor Maximilian I , and his consort Empress Carlota , during the Second Mexican Empire . Colonial period . In 1775 Viceroy Bernardo de Gálvez ordered the construction of a country house for himself at the highest point of Chapultepec Hill . Francisco Bambitelli , Lieutenant Colonel of the Spanish Army and engineer , drew up the blueprint and began the construction on August 16 of the same year . After Bambitelli ' s departure to Havana , Captain Manuel Agustín Mascaró took over the leadership of the project and during his tenure the works proceeded at a rapid pace . Mascaró was accused of building a fortress with the intent of rebelling against the Spanish Crown from there . His sudden death on November 8 , 1786 , fueled speculation that he may have been poisoned ; however no evidence has ever been found supporting this claim . , Without an engineer in charge , the Crown ordered the building to be auctioned to a price equivalent to one fifth of the total already spent of the project . After finding no buyers Viceroy Juan Vicente de Güemes Pacheco de Padilla y Horcasitas intended the building to house the General Archive of the Kingdom of the New Spain ; that idea was not to prosper either despite already having the blueprints adapted for this purpose . Alexander von Humboldt visited the site in 1803 and condemned the sale of the palace ’ s windows by the Royal Treasury as a way of raising funds for the Crown . The building was finally bought in 1806 by the municipal government of Mexico City . Independence . Chapultepec Castle was abandoned during the Mexican War of Independence ( 1810 – 1821 ) and for many years later , until 1833 . In that year the building was decreed to become the location of the Colegio Militar ( Military Academy ) ; as a sequence of several structural modifications had to be done , including the addition of the watchtower known as " Caballero Alto " ( " Tall Knight " ) . On September 13 , 1847 , the Niños Héroes ( " Boy Heroes " ) died defending the castle while it was taken by United States forces during the Battle of Chapultepec of the Mexican - American War . They are honored with a large mural on the ceiling above the main entrance to the castle . The United States Marine Corps honors the Battle of Chapultepec and the subsequent occupation of Mexico City through the first line of the " Marines ' Hymn , " From the Halls of Montezuma . Marine Corps tradition maintains that the red stripe worn on the trousers of officers and noncommissioned officers , and commonly known as the blood stripe commemorates the supposedly high number of Marine NCOs and officers killed storming the castle of Chapultepec in 1847 . Several new rooms were built on the second floor of the palace during the tenure of President Miguel Miramón , who was also an alumnus of the Military Academy . Second Mexican Empire . The castle started to acquire its current look during the Second Mexican Empire , when Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico and his wife Empress Carlota chose it as their residence and the seat of their Court in 1864 . The Emperor hired several European and Mexican architects , among them Julius Hofmann , Carl Gangolf Kayser , Carlos Schaffer , Eleuterio Méndez and Ramón Cruz Arango , to design the several projects , which followed a neoclassical style and made the palace more habitable . European architects Kayser and Hofmann worked on several other revival castles , including Neuschwanstein Castle – built by Maximilian ' s Wittelsbach cousin Ludwig II of Bavaria twenty years after Chapultepec ' s renovation . Botanist Wilhelm Knechtel was in charge of creating the aerial garden located on the roof of the building . Additionally , the Emperor brought from Europe countless pieces of furniture , objets d ' art and other fine household items that are exhibited to this day . At this time , the castle was still located on the outskirts of Mexico City . Maximilian ordered the construction of a straight boulevard ( modeled after the great boulevards of Europe , such as Vienna ' s Ringstrasse and the Champs - Élysées in Paris ) , to connect the Imperial residence with the city centre , and named it " Paseo de la Emperatriz " ( " Promenade of the Empress " ) . Following the reestablishment of the Republic in 1867 by President Benito Juárez and the end of the Reform War ( " Guerra de Reforma " ) the boulevard was renamed Paseo de la Reforma . Modern era . The castle fell into disuse after the fall of the Second Mexican Empire in 1867 . Almost ten years later , in 1876 , a decree established an Astronomical , Meteorological and Magnetic Observatory on the site , which was opened in 1878 . However , the observatory was only functional for five years after it was decided to move it to the former residence of the Archbishop in Tacubaya . The reason was to allow the return of the Colegio Militar to the premises as well as transforming the building into the presidential residence . The palace underwent several structural changes from 1882 and during the term of President Porfirio Díaz . The other Presidents who made the palace their official residence were Francisco I . Madero , Venustiano Carranza , Álvaro Obregón , Plutarco Elías Calles , Emilio Portes Gil , Pascual Ortiz Rubio and Abelardo Rodríguez . It was used for a time as an official guest house or residence for foreign dignitaries . Finally on February 3 , 1939 , President Lázaro Cárdenas decreed a law that established Chapultepec Castle as the seat of the National Museum of History ( " Museo Nacional de Historia " ) with the collections of the former National Museum of Archaeology , History and Ethnography , ( now the National Museum of Cultures ) . The museum was opened on September 27 , 1944 . President Cárdenas moved the official Mexican presidential residence to Los Pinos , and never lived in Chapultepec Castle .