Altar to the Homeland

The Altar to the Homeland, popularly known as the obelisk of the heroes, was inaugurated on April 21, 1998, in the roundabout of 16 de Septiembre and Arista streets in the center of Veracruz. This monument replaced an earlier one from 1952 and was created to pay tribute not only to the heroes of the US invasions of 1847 and 1914, but also to the defenders of the French intervention of 1838 and the victims of the bombardment of 1823, events linked to the city's title of "Four Times Heroic." The obelisk, covered in black marble and raised on staircases, contains inscriptions referring to each conflict and seeks to concentrate in a single site the memory of those who defended Veracruz against foreign attacks.