The Gentling brothers' artistic reconstruction of Mexico Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Mexica empire

Among the best of the reconstructions, even if the scale of some buildings is innacurate or some buildings are outright fanciful. The Spanish chronicles describe a gleaming white city, Bernal Diaz del Castillo describes the buildings shining so brightly as if they were made of silver. The artists used Nahua architectural forms, many of which survive to this day in Mexican architecture, namely the rectangular whitewashed adobe or stone houses, many times featuring an inner courtyard.

Laurette Sejourne found tools for polishing lime cement plaster which covered almost all of the major buildings of Teotihuacan some 1,000 years prior to Mexico's prehispanic glory days. The artisan would scrape the tool repeatedly to get a mirror-like reflection. This was also undoubtedly a technique used by later Nahua builders and artisans considering the descriptions.

Here is a visual treat of the Stuart and Scott Gentling's vision of Mexico Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the prehispanic Mexica, which would become the capital of present-day Mexico. A lot of this style of  architecture was common in the high plateau's many towns and cities as well.

The courtyard of a royal palace near the city center



The Xoloco gate where Cortes met the retinue of Moteuczoma II

A main causeway of the city

A wealthy household's courtyard

An allied European bringantine docked near Acachinanco gate

A palatial park from within a veranda

A palatial interior with instruments

Among the city's watery thoroughfares

The "new houses" palace of Moteuczoma II later rebuilt as the palace of the Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca and then the palace of the viceroy of New Spain




A panoramic view of the sacred precinct of the city


A closeup of the city's main temple

From the rear of the main temple

A closeup of the main temple precinct


While these reconstructions are impressive, they nonetheless contain a good measure of the fanciful. We don't know the full appearance of many of these buildings but we can approximate using archaeological information, known architectural styles, and descriptions left by the people who were able to see the city when it still stood.

Tenochtitlan was undoubtedly among the biggest urbanistic pushes in Mesoamerica since the time of the classica Maya cities and Teotihuacan. It was a city that had street sweepers, public toilets, fresh water aqueducts, a police force, neighborhood schools and elite colleges. It had markets that could rival any in the world at the time. While the city that came later was initially a downgrade it would grow to become a jewel in the crown of the Spanish crown and perhaps the richest city in the empire. But that later city is a matter for another post.

For now I leave you with Thomas Kole's aerial reconstruction of Mexico Tenochtitlan as it appeared in 1519, on the eve of one of the most destructive wars in the history of Mesoamerica and the world, just before the allied Hispano-Nahua armies brought it down by flooding, fire and some of the fiercest urban combat in world history. And not too far removed from the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople on the other side of the world. The society and the city that emerged from the war and the subjugation of the rst of Mesoamerica was one that served as the basis for the modern Indo-Hispanic Mexican identity.














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