Tenochtitlan
— — the city the lake used to hold.
Not only on a wall.
“Founded by the Mexica in 1325 on an island in Lake Texcoco, Tenochtitlan grew into the capital of the Aztec empire. Causeways ran out to the mainland; chinampa gardens floated between canals. Cortés took the city in August 1521 after a long siege, and the Spaniards built their colonial capital on top of it. The lake was drained. The Templo Mayor sits half-excavated beside the Zócalo, with the Catedral Metropolitana standing on its outline. from the studio
Tenochtitlan, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325 by the Mexica people on a small island in Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico, at about 2,240 metres of elevation. By the early sixteenth century it was the capital of the Aztec Triple Alliance and one of the largest cities in the world, with population estimates ranging between 200,000 and 400,000. Three great causeways linked the island to the mainland; a network of canals served as streets. The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés laid siege in 1521 and built Mexico City directly over the ruins. The lake was systematically drained across the colonial period.
The Templo Mayor, the twin-temple pyramid at the centre of the city, was rebuilt in seven phases between 1325 and 1487. Its final form rose roughly 60 metres, dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, the war and sun god, and Tlaloc, the rain god. The site was lost beneath colonial Mexico City until February 1978, when Light and Power Company workers struck the eight-tonne Coyolxauhqui stone disk while digging a trench off the Zócalo. The discovery prompted the full archaeological excavation that visitors walk through today, beside the Catedral Metropolitana.
The Valley of Mexico sat in a closed basin with five connected lakes: Texcoco at the centre, Xochimilco and Chalco to the south, Xaltocan and Zumpango to the north. Tenochtitlan was built on raised ground in the brackish waters of Texcoco, fed fresh water by an aqueduct from the springs at Chapultepec. Spanish drainage works, begun in the seventeenth century and finished in the twentieth, removed nearly all surface water. The chinampas of Xochimilco, the last working remnant of the old hydraulic city, still produce vegetables and flowers and were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.