A Tale of three Cities: The Aztecs and Other Urbanities in Ancient Mexico
At the time of the Spanish Conquest, Aztec Tenochtitlan in Central Mexico was one of the most populous cities in the world, a city the Conquistadors themselves said was "like an enchanted vision", a city of grand pyramids, plazas, palaces, marketplaces, and hydraulic works surrounded by vast numbers of houses of its inhabitants and their gardens. In fact Tenochititlan was only the latest of many urban societies that flourished in what we call Middle America or Mesoamerica before the arrival of the Spanish.