At the heart of the Spanish colonial city, San Agustín Plaza is a public space in the Spanish-Mexican tradition. The plaza and its adjacent urban grid were laid out and recorded by the royal surveyors during their visit in 1767 in accordance with the Laws of the Indies. The rectangular plaza was an unpaved open space for public festivities and trade until it was landscaped in the 1890s. Benches, a statue to Mexican hero Ignacio Zaragoza, a streamlined neoclassical bandstand from 1934, and a lively pedestrian scene make this space, socially and architecturally, indistinguishable from those across the river in Mexico.