Anthropology Museum

Main temple

From Mexicas and colonial chronicles, and with the collaboration of the sculptor Carmen Carrillo de Antúnez, Ignacio Marquina created the first model with an identical material of this religious center, including the Templo Mayor, which provided for many years perhaps the best visual picture three-dimensional of that enclosure.

The Templo Mayor was the largest structure in the city, located in the ceremonial center of the capital of the empire. It was a double temple, formed by the typical truncated pyramid, but with a double staircase and an annexed temple at each front corner of its base, which was about 60 meters high, and at its top the two temples, dedicated to the cult of Tláloc, god of rain (to the north, with blue paint), and the other to Huitzilopochtli, god of war (to the south, with red paint). The Templo Mayor was the symbolic center of the great tributary network of the Mexica Empire, a place where sacred offerings and funerary deposits were gathered; a shrine to the deities of war and rain; a symbol of the achievements of the Aztecs before their enemies.

The most recent archaeological excavations have made possible a greater precision in the location and the characteristics of certain buildings, however, there are not many structures of the sacred site whose original dimensions are known.