The romance of cities calls to me: millions of lives, purposeful bustle, vertical landscapes. Mexico City is a real city. It may not have canyons like New York, but it does have skyscrapers. For my money, the best of them is the Torre Latinoamericana. It resembles the classic buildings of the '20s and '30s.
Mexico City is overwhelmingly big. It's hopelessly congested, smoggy, and noisy. I can't get my head around the place.
Five hundred years ago the city was called Tenochtitlán. A painting of how it might have looked hangs in the Museo Nacional de Antropología. This image is said to have been carefully reconstructed from reports written by men who accompanied Cortez during his conquest of Mexico.
Occupying an island in Lake Texcoco, its setting must have been far more beautiful than that of the modern city. The population then was around 200,000, less than 1% of the current figure. What would it have been like to live then?
The Spanish came, conquered, and destroyed Tenochtitlán. The population plummeted due to warfare, the rigors of slavery, and smallpox. Four hundred years later, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the population had recovered to around 500,000.
Mexican landscape painter José María Velasco depicts an idyllic place: peaceful countryside with Mexico City a tiny smudge in the center of the painting. I imagine I would have liked to visit Mexico City back then. Were only members of the nobility in positions to enjoy life in the Nineteenth Century? What was life like for ordinary people? I'd like to think those times were a golden age, today buried beneath rampant development and frantic traffic.
Thank you for sharing your photos and comments about Mexico City. It is a fascinating, challenging place and I loved my visits there.
Posted by: Irene | 01/13/2010 at 10:30 AM