In the course of the 17th century the city grew beyond the natural frontier of these rivers and there thus appeared the church and cloister of Las Aguas, as well as the civil works that acted to strengthen the status of city center heId by the district where the cathedral stood. A century la ter, the Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada was created, which turned Santafé into a capital city. It spread beyond the plaza of San Francisco, next to the church of the same name, towards the church of Las Nieves, and on the north side, towards the church of San Diego, which existed since the early 17th century. These buildings and places accentuated the linear nature of the city´ s structure, a characteristic that was conserved until well into the 20th century.

During the 19th century there was a considerable growth in the number of inhabitants. This produced a greater density of population in the city center. In 1862, during the second presidential term of General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, the state expropriated properties belonging to the Catholic Church and as a result of this decision, many of the old cloisters were converted into government offices, a situation that continued for many years until they were demolished to make way for new buildings. This is what happened to the cloisters of San Francisco, San Agustin, Santa Clara, San Juan de Dios, Santo Domingo and la Enseñanza.
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, the rivers San Francisco and San Agustín, which formed the old borders of the city, began to be channeled underground for reasons of public health, since they had become highly contaminated, a process that went on until the 1930´s. The river San Francisco gave way to the Avenida Jiménez, which turned into the financial sector of the city, and a number of important institutional, commercial and office buildings were erected along and around it, among them, the offices of the Governor of Cundinamarca and the Pedro A. López building. Later would come the first seat of the Bogotá Stock Exchange, the Caja de Crédito Agrario bank, the Camacho building, the headquarters of the Suramericana de Seguros company, the Banco de la República (the central bank, on the site of the old Hotel Granada), the first and second headquarters of the newspaper El Tiempo and the seat of the Colombian Academy of Language. This urban thoroughfare, recently recuperated with the building of the \"environmental hub\", reaches a visual climax with the backdrop of the mountain ridge of Monserrate to the east and passes Los Andes university and the estate or \"quinta\" where Bolívar lived.

On April 9, 1948, a few meters away from the Avenida Jiménez, on Cal in front of the now vanished Agustín Nieto building, there occurred an event that changed the face of the city center: the assassination of presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. It provoked the riots that became known the \"Bogotazo\" and the resulting arson and pillage destroyed many historic monuments. Among them were the buildings of the Justice Palaces, stood on the property of the old convent of la Enseñanza, and the old archbishop´s residence, now reconstructed and used as the seat of the Botero Donation. It al so led many people to emigrate from the center, a process which had begun, decades before, with the consolidation of the districts Chapinero, to the north, and San Cristóbal, to the south. Fortunately for the city center, many branches of the national and municipal government stayed behind -despite a trend which shifted others and even included a plan in the mid-1950´s, during the administration of President Rojas Pinilla, to move the presidential residence to another place. This meant that when the first norms for the architectural conservation of the historic center were established, one of the main problems that affect such districts, whatever the city, was partly solved -the use of protected buildings. AII that was lacking was the strengthening of residential use, a job which the city began in the 1980’s, mainly through the activities of la Corporación La Candelaria. This institution has been responsible for a wide variety of reforms, which include the physical recuperation of public spaces, the conversion of some old buildings into cultural centers and the remodeling of others for residential use. It has also overseen the enforcement of architectural and urban planning regulations, specially designed for the district, which have enabled the historic center to conserve its characteristic features.