Barbara_E._Mundy]_The_Death_of_Aztec_Tenochtitlan

112 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy

imperial garb of the turquoise miter and brilliant cloak,
showing his affiliation to this august line of indigenous
rulership. The palace that Moteuczoma inhabits in the
Codex Mendoza is a rendering of the past, but also an
augur of the future, to be seen in the newly constructed
and architecturally similar tecpan, which gave concrete and
physical form in the changing city to the enduring presence
of Mexica rulers.
To gauge the importance of this building within
the urban fabric, it helps to recall that at the time of its

completion, around 1542, there was no such equivalent

palace for the viceroy in the center of the city, and there

would not be for another twenty years. When Mendoza

arrived in the city in 1535, he and the audiencia were housed

in the so-called casas viejas (old houses), the former palace

of Axayacatl. 52 And while the city’s Spanish residents cer-

tainly would have orbited around the Plaza Mayor, where

government functions and civic ritual took place, the vast

majority of the city’s residents were more likely to pass

through or congregate in the southwest quarter, where the

figuRe 5.7. Unknown creator, Palace of

Moteuczoma, Codex Mendoza, fol. 69r,

ca. 1542. Bodleian Libraries, University

of Oxford, Ms. Arch. Selden A1.