The Historical Center of Mexico, known also as El Centro or Downtown Mexico, currently includes about 1,436 historically important buildings constructed between the 16th and 20th centuries and they are extended over 9 square kilometres and 668 blocks.
It is divided in two zones, in order to preserve them, which are the Zone A that comprehends the pre-Hispanic, Viceroy and Independence periods and the Zone B that comprehends the 19th century period.
Predominantly, its historical relevance over many periods, El Centro owns many public plazas, buildings, palaces, temples, museums and markets; all of them points of reference survivors of the time and catalogued with artistic and historical values. El Centro and its old part of the town also receive the name of La Casa de los Palacios, The House of the Palaces.
The area is primarily focused on the Main Plaza, known as Zócalo, which is the largest plaza in Latin America and the second largest in the world, and being able to hold up around 100,000 people. It is bordered by the Cathedral, the National Palace, the Federal District Buildings and the Old Mercantile Center, the National Monte de Piedad building with the Templo Mayor; all of them wonders of constructions.
Some other notable buildings, part of El Centro are:
The whole historical center of Mexico that is seen now hardly connects with the ancient Aztec City of Tenochtitlán founded around 1325. According to the anthropologists, during the pre-Hispanic era the Tenochtitlán people built the city in a kind of fashion plan, with streets and canals following the cardinal directions and forming square blocks.
Initially, the island where the city was found on had to be divided in four neighbourhoods by the main roads leading Tepeyac in the north, Iztapalapa in the south, Tacuba in the west and a dike into the lake in the east; and the neighbourhoods received the names Cuepopan, Atzacualco, Moyotla and Zoquipan respectively with subdivisions each. Finally, the convergence of these places was the center of the Aztec city and its world.
The Aztec city of Tenochtitlán there were important buildings including the Main Temple; the Palaces of the Emperors and Nobles like the House of Demons and the House of the Flowers; two important well-known schools, The Telpuchcalli for secular studies and The Calmecac for priestly training.
Besides, there were also many aqueducts and large dikes to the east of the Aztec city, both constructed by the rulers Ahuizotl and Montezuma Ilhuicamina.
By the time, when the Spaniards arrive, Tenochtitlán were still intact, and thankfully most because of the efforts of Alonso García Bravo. He was the principal supervisor of the rebuilding of the Aztec City, conserving most of the thoroughfares including Tenayuca, Tlacopan and Tepeyac; nowadays named Vallejo, México Tacuba and Calzada de los Misterios respectively.
But, the most surprising is how, through the time, most of the major divisions of the city have been preserved by adding Christian prefixes such as San Juan Moyotla, Santa María Tlaquechiuacan, San Sebastián Atzacualco and San Pedro Teopan, all of them even built with the fragments of the broken buildings belonging to Tenochtitlán.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Spanish people, who established in what is now Mexico City, started to accumulate their wealth mainly through both the mining and the commerce; and as a prove, they are the mansions dispersed in the Centro, including the Palace of Itubide and Casa de Azulejos, built with tiles from Puebla in Arab style in the 16h century.
By whole those times is when the Spaniards started to build Mexico City, until what it is now; the power of the Spanish colony is over of the old center of the Aztec Empire.
Nowadays, despite of the deterioration suffered in 1940’s partly man-made and partly natural losing about 100,000 residents of the Colonia Centro, the governments has made efforts to regenerate parts of the city infusing money and buying old buildings in order to be rehabilitated , remodelled and restored.