Mexico Guide
Mexico City
Tlatelolco
Opening time: daily 9am–7pm
Price: free
Address: Metro Garibaldi – from the exit, cross Reforma and head north up Lázaro Cárdenas, where you'll find it after 400m on your right
The ancient ruins of Tlatelolco were once the core of a city considerably more ancient than Tenochtitlán, based on a separate but nearby island in the lake. For a long time, its people existed under independent rule in close alliance with the Aztecs of Tenochtitlán, but it was by far the most important commercial and market centre in the valley; even after its annexation to the Aztec empire in 1473 Tlatelolco retained this role. When Cortés and his troops arrived, they marvelled at the size and order of the Tlatelolco market. Cortés himself estimated that some 60,000 people – buyers and sellers – came and went each day, and Bernal Díaz wrote:
We were astounded at the great number of people and the quantities of merchandise, and at the orderliness and good arrangements that prevailed . . . every kind of goods was kept separate and had its fixed place marked for it . . . Some of the soldiers among us who had been in many parts of the world, in Constantinople, in Rome, and all over Italy, said that they had never seen a market so well laid out, so large, so orderly, and so full of people.
In 1521 the besieged Aztecs made their final stand here, and a plaque in the middle of the plaza recalls that struggle: "On the 13th of August 1521", it reads, "defended by the heroic Cuauhtémoc, Tlatelolco fell under the power of Hernan Cortés. It was neither a triumph nor a defeat, but the painful birth of the mixed race that is the Mexico of today". The ruins are a pale reflection of the ancient city – the original temples, whose scale can be inferred from the size of the bases – rivalled those in Tenochtitlán. The chief temple, for example, had reached its eleventh rebuilding by the time of the Conquest – what you see now corresponds to the second stage, and by the time nine more had been superimposed it would certainly have risen much higher than the church that was built from its stones. On top was likely a double sanctuary similar to that on the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlán. The smaller structures include a square tzompantli, or wall of skulls, near which nearly two hundred human skulls were discovered, all with holes through the temples – presumably the result of having been displayed side by side on long poles around the sides of the building.