PXL_20250413_153401724

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 07:49:22 +0100

Phase 4

The people who lived in this place called themselves Mexicas. They were Nahuatl-speakers who settled in Tenochtitlan and the neighboring city of Tlaltelolco. According to their myths, their main god, Huitzilopochtli, ordered them to leave Aztlan.

After a long pilgrimage, miraculous signs led them to their final place of residence, such as the appearance of the eagle, representative of the sun god Huitzilopochtli, perched on a prickly pear cactus in the middle of a lake.

And so, in 1325, life began in Tenochtitlan, which would see its fall 200 years later with the Spanish invasion. The final strongholds of the Mexica people disappeared as time passed; the same cannot be said of Nahuatl-speakers, who have survived to the present in some regions of this city and other states in Mexico.

After the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521, the Great Temple was almost totally destroyed and the houses of two of the Spaniards, the Ávila brothers, were built in its place. In 1566, these brothers were taken prisoner, along with Martín Cortés -the son of the conquistador Hernán Cortés- for conspiring against the Spanish Crown.

The Ávila brothers were sentenced to death and decapitated. Their houses were demolished and the terrain was covered with salt, as dictated in their sentence. The lot was abandoned for many years and was used as a garbage dump.

Some time later the property of the Ávila brothers was granted to the Royal and Pontifical University for use as a construction site. This project was never accomplished and the land was passed on to several different owners. In the year 1928 the old bookstore named the Libreria Robredo was established there and was then transferred to José Porrúa and Sons in 1934.