El Nivel, Mexico City — A Lost Old Pub

What happened

El Nivel poured on the ground floor of a building far older than anything it claimed. The Real y Pontificia Universidad de México opened there in 1551 and left in 1589; the house was rebuilt in the 1740s after the flood of 1629. The cantina's own date was 1857, and its proudest possession was licence number one, the first issued in the capital for the sale of drink, signed by Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada. Lerdo did not take the presidency until July 1872, which puts the paper fifteen years after the year on the sign, and the histories repeat both figures without reconciling them. The name came from a survey marker outside, the hypsographic monument that everyone called El Nivel, the level. The restaurant El Cardenal took space in the same building in 1969. The house passed into public ownership in 1982 and to the national university in 1994; the university went to court for possession and won, and the cantina traded on under an injunction until its owner, Jesús Aguirre, died. It stopped serving in 2008, at the corner of Moneda and Seminario beside the National Palace.

What is there now

A museum. The building at Moneda 2 reopened in 2015, after restoration, as the Museo UNAM Hoy: excavated remains associated with a temple to Tezcatlipoca under the ground floor, a room of changing exhibitions above, twenty pesos to get in and free for students and pensioners. The federal culture ministry's register of Mexican museums carries it. Nothing is poured at the corner now; the transaction at that door is a ticket.

Sources

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