About this site
by Delle Maxwell
The Tenochtitlan web site is centered around a three-dimensional computer reconstruction of what the ceremonial precinct of the great Aztec capital may have looked like before it was destroyed by Cortes and his Spanish conquistadors in 1521. Twenty one major archtitectural features or temple complexes, as well as sculptures and figures appear in this model. There are texture maps to help to show what some of the murals and reliefs may have appeared. But these buildings alone are merely empty shells, insignificant without the names, associations, the myths, the ceremonies, the history... The addition of this material, via links to writings, sounds, images, and references help illustrate the rich and complex lives of the Aztec people.
Since most of the original structures have been destroyed, the creation of an accurate model has been based on educated conjectures, archaeological finds, the work of others, and a bit of artistic and architectural imagination. The original architectural model was created by Ignacio Marquina, and is displayed at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Marquina based his model on readings of 16th century texts, and on modern archaeological finds at the site in Mexico City. The original of this computer model, created by Bob Galbraith, was based on photographs of Marquina physical model, and on readings by Galbraith in modern texts. He built it in Autocad, then converted the dxf file to the VRML 1.0 format.
And finally, for this version, I took the 11 MB Galbraith model and reconstructed it as a VRML 2.0 model. so that it was navigable. I also added color, texture, more models, and corrected some minor inaccuracies. Level of detail models, references to supporting documents and pictures, and background information was also supplied.
With the model and the research material, I began to construct this site. As I began to rework it, I started reading more about the Aztecs, and was soon gathering a large stack of research material. In the beginning, all I had were questions. Who were the Aztec people--what were their lives like? What relation did these sacred buildings have to their lives? How is it that we have so few complete artifacts of Tenochtitlan, when the arrival of the Spaniards dates from only 475 years ago? The volumes of material changed gradually from a vast stack of undifferentiated facts into the beginnings of a story.
It is meant to be an integration of the walk-through experience with enough information in words, pictures, sounds and reference information to provide a context, a sense of what that world was. There is a narrative thread that provides a conjecture on what the exhanges between Moctezuma and Cortes may have been, from the first meeting up to the time when they had a heated exchange at the top of the Templo Mayor. Unfortunately, I can't hope to completely reconstruct the ceremonial precinct in all its detail. Nor can it be a substitute for going to Mexico and seeing the ruins in situ, experiencing them in all the dimensions of the senses computers can not yet provide. But I can offer the curious armchair traveler a journey to a place that cannot be seen in its entirety except via computer graphics and the mind's eye. You can discover for yourself this physical manifestation of the Aztec cosmovision, the connection between structure, location, and meaning. And perhaps you will be tempted to learn more for yourself, following the in the path of other scholars, historians, writers, artists, and enthusiasts, each who have reconstructed this world in their own way.
For information about the creation of the site, contact:
For information on the original computer model, contact: