foRgeTTing TenochTiTLan • 117a source of food and drink; moreover, the canalizing of
water through Franciscan convents seems to have been a
trope, as Jaime Lara has pointed out, that evoked the flow-
ing waters of Jerusalem. 8
One of the first structures to be built in this space was
the large open Chapel of San José de los Naturales, which
was located in the eastern end of the site (see figure 6.2). In
the 1550s, it was one of the largest and most elegant spaces
in the city—much more so than the jerry-built Cathedral,
which stood on the Plaza Mayor and served the Spanish
residents of the city. As a testament to its importance, we
find that the public Mass that was said to welcome the
newly arrived Viceroy Luis de Velasco in 1550 was held at
the Chapel of San José de los Naturales, the only space that
could accommodate the city’s crowds; a few years later the
funeral ceremonies for Charles V were held there as well as
the autos-da-fé of the Inquisition. 9 The Franciscan living
quarters and church were nearby within the complex, likely
in the western part of the site, but later construction has
covered the traces of this early architecture, including the
chapel. The southwest quadrant of the site seems to have
been where the gardens were planted, taking advantage
of the canal running through them; gardens continued to
thrive here into the nineteenth century, as we see in fig-
ure 6.2. This elegant map was created in the wake of the
Liberal Reform Laws in the mid-nineteenth century, as
urban cartographers were called upon to create detailed
plans of ecclesiastic property that was to be seized by the
state. Most of the dense architectural fabric we see in the
plan was constructed in the eighteenth century, but some of
the use patterns were established with its early sixteenth-
century foundation: the concentration of architecture in
the eastern part of the site (it was here that the Chapel
of San José de los Naturales once stood) perhaps made
use of much-earlier Mexica foundations, and the exten-
sive orchards and gardens that dominate the southwest
corner of the monastery at lower right were planted where
adjacent canals once allowed a supply of irrigation water
from the Laguna of Mexico as well as easy transport of
produce to market.
The Franciscans imagined their monastery as the pivotfiguRe 6.2. Plano General del Convento de San Francisco, mid-
nineteenth century. Top is oriented to the east. Mapoteca Orozco y
Berro, 1459-OYB-725.c. Servicio de Información Agroalimentaria y
Pesquera, Sa GarPa.