In addition to being in the geographical center of the 21st century city, the historic district of Bogotá is the center of the administrative, cultural and residential activities that take place there. More than thirty blocks of the historic cent are dedicated to residential use and the district is the home of families I different socioeconomic strata, so that many of its buildings have been recuperated. This sector also houses the headquarters of banks and major Colombian companies, as well as the offices of the main institutions of the national, departmental and municipal governments. It likewise contains primal and secondary schools, technological and vocational centers and 12 universities, among them the Universidad de los Andes, whose campus is described in detail here. Their presence gives this district a special dynamism.

This educational presence is complemented by cultural and tourist attractions: theaters, auditoriums, museums, libraries, scientific and literary centers, galleries, restaurants and hotels. AII this, together with the fact that most of the buildings in Bogotá that are historic monuments of national importance are found in this district, makes it the cultural center of the city.

In short, this district not only houses buildings of different periods and formal references, but it is also shared by inhabitants of different social and economic origins. Those who live and work in the historic center give these buildings life and meaning and they have worked together to ensure the district´ s conservation, despite the dizzying changes which the city confronted in the 20th century. In this process, many of the buildings, streets and sites that gave the center its identity for centuries disappeared, giving way to new buildings and places which personified, at the time, an ideal of transformation and change -a slippery notion of progress that manifested itself in different urban and architectural expressions.

But this illusion of progress vanished as soon as it was thought to have been achieved, a conclusion that is evident when one reads the descriptions, made at the time of their construction, of buildings as diverse and distant in time as the Hernández building or the former seat of the Banco de Bogotá, which augured periods of modernization accompanied by a solid prosperity. Whoever looks at these buildings now and sees their physical deterioration cannot help feeling uneasy. It would seem that modernity has gone somewhere else.