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Mexico City · History

From Tenochtitlan to the Capital of New Spain

In the heart of the Historic Centre, two cities lie one on top of the other: the Mexica city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan and the colonial capital the Spanish built literally over it, using the same stones. This route starts in the square where public scribes worked, passes the college where muralism was born, looks down into the ruins of the Templo Mayor and ends in front of the National Palace and the Cathedral.

  • 5 stops
  • 1.2 km
  • 1 h 30 min
  • Free
Start with GPS Read about this stop 1
Volcanic stone walls and platforms in the Templo Mayor archaeological zone

The route

Stop by stop

  1. 1 Plaza de Santo DomingoThe square where faith, taxes and censorship lived side by side, and where scribes still prepare paperwork under the arches.
  2. 2 Antiguo Colegio de San IldefonsoA 16th-century Jesuit college where, in 1922, painters swapped the easel for the scaffold.
  3. 3 Templo MayorThe great temple of Tenochtitlan, dismantled in 1521 and rediscovered in 1978 by electricity workers.
  4. 4 National PalaceFrom Moctezuma's palace to the viceroys' and the presidents': five hundred years of power on the same block.
  5. 5 Metropolitan CathedralAlmost three centuries in the making: a façade you read from bottom to top, from Renaissance to Neoclassical.

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Start with GPS

Guide mode

Walk it with GPS.

Open guide mode on your phone: you’ll see your position and the distance to each stop, and we’ll let you know when you arrive. Then read or listen.

Start with GPS

  1. Turn on your location

  2. Walk to the spot

  3. Check the photo and listen

What you’ll discover

From Tenochtitlan to the Capital of New Spain

One city on top of another

See how the colonial capital was built over the Mexica sacred precinct, and how that precinct resurfaced in 1978 with a single swing of a pickaxe.

Three centuries of power

The Inquisition, the Customs House, the viceroys' palace and the cathedral: the machinery that governed New Spain.

Walls that tell history

San Ildefonso and the National Palace hold the murals in which Rivera and Orozco rewrote Mexico's past.

Keep exploring

More routes in Mexico City

Back to Mexico City
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