ABSTRACT
Mexico City and its main square, established on the ruins of a fourteenth century Aztec capital, represents the effect that Spanish colonial planning and politics had on urban form in the Americas. When originally founded in 1325, the pre-Columbian city of MexicoTenochtitlán was in an idyllic setting on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco surrounded by mountains rich with vegetation and wildlife. The city, set out on a grid of streets and canals and dominated by a ceremonial precinct at its center, lasted only two hundred years when it was virtually destroyed following the Spanish incursion into the region. On Hernán Cortés’ orders, the entire city was reconstructed using a “Law of the Indies” grid plan over the Aztec plan. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the Aztec central temple of Huitzilopochtli was razed and used to build a cathedral but this too was removed and a second cathedral built between 1667 and 1813. Remnants of the Tenochtitlán temple and the underlying urban plan are just northeast of the square.
