Spanish Rule on Mexico City

In 1519 a group of Spaniards under the leadership of explorer Hernán Cortés arrived in Mexico.

In 1521 Cortés conquered the city in an 85-day siege, during which most of Tenochtitlán was destroyed.

When the conquest was complete, the population of the city had dwindled to about 30,000 people as a result of the war and epidemics of unfamiliar European diseases.

The Spaniards began to reconstruct the city soon after they conquered it. Like most Spanish colonial cities, Mexico City was laid out on a grid pattern.

The cathedral and the principal administrative buildings were built around a central plaza, known today as the Zócalo.

The mansions and palaces of the elite, most of whom were appointees from Spain, were located in the streets running off the plaza.

The poor lived farther away or slept in the streets, while Native Americans lived in jacales (villages of huts) at the city margins.

The new European-style city, renamed Mexico City, became the most important settlement in Spain's American colonies.

It served as an administrative center, a major military outpost, and a base for exporting the mineral and agricultural wealth of the Americas to Spain.

The city became the capital of the colony of New Spain, which included Mexico, most of Central America, and large sections of what is today the southern United States.

Beginning in 1535 a series of royal governors known as viceroys ruled New Spain from Mexico City.

The city's upper class grew rich on the profits from Mexican gold and silver mines.

Despite problems with disease, famine, and flooding, the city grew.

In the 17th century the Spaniards built massive canals to drain Lake Texcoco.

The canals reclaimed land and alleviated chronic flooding.

The city's population rose gradually, reaching 60,000 by 1600, 105,000 by 1700, and 137,000 by 1800.