The creation of the city was a task similar to that of building Venice in its lagoon. Land had to be created by dredging mud from the lake between lines of pilings; extra fields for food-growing were formed by piling sludge on floating platforms of reeds, as can be seen today in the floating gardens of Xochimilco; stone had to be brought in from a hostile countryside. But by 1519 they had created a beautiful, flourishing city. Its center was the great temple, where Mexico City 's main square is today, a terraced building up, which the captives were marched to the sacrificial stone to have their hearts cut out. Across from the temple was the vast imperial palace. Like the temple it was a complex of buildings, grouped around interior courts and broken by canals. "I went several times to the emperor's residence merely to look at it," one Spanish soldier remarked. "Each time I walked about until I was quite tired, but even so I never saw the whole of it." All these white-painted buildings, which housed hundreds of priests and visiting nobility, the law courts and public treasury, prisons, music school, and even a house of rare birds, were entwined with blossoming trees. For this conjunction of a priestly and warrior aristocracy, Tenochtitlan existed. Its third function, as marketplace, was satisfied by the canals and vast open squares, where merchandise from all over the valley was sold in carefully arranged aisles-gold and silver, feathers, slaves, shoes, foodstuffs, colors for dyeing, building materials, and medicines. And to facilitate communication, the whole city was laid out in regular rectangles, divided by broad, straight streets, one side of which was beaten earth, the other a canal. The countryside that supported this metropolis with food and sacrificial victims was exploited, receiving no benefits for the supplies exacted from it; and the Aztecs' neighbors were easily persuaded by Cort6s to aid him against their overlords

Bibliography

La Capital, Jonathan Kendal, Thames and Hudson 1986, New York.

The Early Evolution of Urban Society and Prehistoric Mexico, Adams, Robert Adeline , Chicago , 1976

I have found my guardian at:
Guardians

Graphics for this Cali supplied by and with the kind permission of

frahof

Technochtitlan City Badge created by Acolnahuacatzin ShieldJaguar