Dedicated to Professor Johann Gasteiger on the occasion of his 65th birthdayIn earlier work we demonstrated that the bis-1,3-diketo dianion (L 1 ) 2À is an excellent ligand for the complexation of copper (II) ). [2][3][4] For example, the metallacryptate Ba-3 is a racemic mixture with either[2] However, the two iron centers in meso-[3] The mono-, di-, and trivalent guest cations are endohedrally encapsulated in the cavity of the bicyclic dinuclear host to give [M-3] n+ and their charge is compensated by [FeCl 4 ] À or PF 6 À anions (X À ). Our further studies on the supramolecular coordination chemistry of copper(II) [5] focused on the synthesis of oligonuclear complexes by self-assembly [6] with the 2,6-pyridinylbridged pentadentate ligand (L 2 ) 2À . To this end, we treated 2 [7] with calcium hydride and copper(II) acetate in methanol and isolated the metallacoronate 5 (Scheme 2). We characterized the molecular structure of 5 by X-ray crystallography [8][9][10] of crystals obtained by vapor diffusion of diethyl ether into a solution of 5 in methanol: 5·4 MeOH is present in the crystal as a dinuclear copper(II) coronate, in which a calcium ion is encapsulated in the center, and two acetate ions act as counterions (Figure 1, top). The two crystallographically equivalent copper(II) ions of the idealized-C 2h -symmetric 5[11] have tetragonal-pyramidal coordination geometry, each with two pairs of oxygen donors and one molecule of methanol.In contrast, treatment of a solution of 2 in methanol with copper(II) acetate and cesium carbonate (in place of calcium hydride) does not yield a metallacoronate similar to 5; instead, the larger cesium ion, which prefers a higher coordination number, functions as a template for the formation of the one-dimensional coordination polymer (6) n (Scheme 2). Crystals obtained by vapor diffusion of diethyl Scheme 1. The cation [K-1] + (top left), the dication [Ba-3] 2+ (top right), and the repeating unit in the 1D meso-polymer (4) n (bottom).