Moctezuma Palace: the impressive royal house in which the Tlatoani lived and its relationship with the National Palace

In the Historic Center of Mexico City, you can find some of the most beautiful, impressive and oldest buildings in the country. Without a doubt, the historic center of the capital has some of the best postcards that the city can give us.

However, many of these impressive buildings had a past that even dates back to the time of the Mexicas, before the Conquest of the Spaniards. The buildings that were built after the Conquest of Mexico were built on top of those that were built in the great Tenochtitlan, many of which were destroyed and, with the same stones as them, the new enclosures were built.

Such is the case of the one known as Palacio de Moctezuma, which was located in what is now the National Palace, the residence of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and one of the most important venues in Mexico.

Just a few years before the arrival of the Spaniards in Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma II, who had been in power since 1502, ordered the construction of the royal houses. This construction was carried out on the side of the Templo Mayor. The New Houses of Moctezuma, as they would be known after the conquest, covered the entire current area of the National Palace. In addition, to the north it occupied the block on which the University of Mexico was built, and to the south they reached the site currently occupied by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation.

The conquistador Hernán Cortés described them for King Charles V, in one of his letters of relationship, as follows: “I had inside the city their housing houses such and so wonderful that it would seem almost impossible for me to be able to say the goodness and greatness of them, and therefore I will not begin to express anything about them more than in There is no such thing as Spain”.

It was of such dimensions, that it had 20 access doors. Most of them faced the square and others to the public streets. In addition, it had three courtyards, and in one of them there was a fountain where pure and crystal clear water reached, directly from Chapultepec. It also had many rooms and a hundred chambers or chambers 25 feet long, and a hundred bathrooms.

According to Francisco López de Gomora, chaplain and chronicler of the time, the building “although without nail, was all very good; the walls of ridge, marble, jasper, porphyry, black stone, with some red veins and like ruby, white stone, and another that translucent; the ceilings, of well-carved and carved wood of cedars, palms, cypresses, pines and other trees; the chambers, painted, matted, and many with facings of cotton, rabbit hair, feather...”

Few people had the great privilege of spending the night inside the Royal Houses, but it was said that there were about a thousand women, including ladies, slaves and maids, in the service of Moctezuma. One of the rooms accommodated a thousand people comfortably, and in another of the large rooms, the Spaniards considered it possible that 30 men on horseback “could run canes like in a square”.

At the main entrance the coat of arms welcomed: “an eagle beaten down to a tiger, hands and nails set as to prey”.

One of the most beautiful places inside the royal houses was the oratory. The chapel was plated with gold and silver plates, “almost as thick as the finger” and adorned with emeralds, rubies and topaz.

Everything in the royal houses was worthy of the gods. Every morning, six hundred lords and main persons came to meet Moctezuma. Some remained seated, others walked the corridors while waiting for permission to see the tlatoani. “The gentlemen who entered his house,” Cortés wrote, “did not enter in shoes, and when some who he sent to call went in front of him, they wore their heads and eyes bowed and their bodies were very humiliated, and talking to him they did not look at his face.”

The food on site was a real ritual. Between 300 and 400 young people arrived with great delicacies for the tlatoani. Meat, fish, fruit and vegetables, from everything the tlatoani could imagine, could eat. To prevent the food from getting cold, each of the dishes was placed on a brazier. Moctezuma sat on a leather pillow accompanied by five or six elderly gentlemen, whom he fed. Before and after the food, the emperor's helpers brought him a bowl of water and a towel to clean himself, which he would not use again, as did the dishes he ate on.

After the consummation of the Conquest in 1521, the New Houses of Moctezuma were given to Cortes as a reward for his deeds. By 1562, his descendants sold it to the Spanish crown, and from then on, the place became the Royal Palace, during the viceroyalty, and the National Palace after the consummation of Independence.

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