Among the public edifices are the capitol, which occupies a whole square, the university, of nearly equal size, the cathedral, pantheon, masonic temple (built by the state in the spendthrift days of Guzman Blanco), national library, opera-house, and a number of large churches.
An Apoteosis by Guzman Blanco was published at Paris in 1889.
In the following year Antonio Guzman Blanco succeeded in making himself dictator, after a long series of battles in which he was victorious over the Unionists.
For two decades after the close of these revolutionary troubles in 1870 the supreme power in Venezuela was, for all practical purposes, in the hands of Guzman Blanco.
The tenure of the presidential office was for two years, and at every alternate election Guzman Blanco was declared to be duly and legally chosen to fill the post of chief magistrate of the republic. In 1889 there was an open revolt against the dictatorial system so long in vogue; and President Rojas Paul, Blanco's locum tenens, was forced to flee the country and take refuge in the Dutch colony of Curacoa.
