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Plaza de las Tres Culturas

Cuauhtémoc, Mexico CityLandmarks in Mexico CityPlazas in Mexico CityUse American English from April 2019Use mdy dates from April 2019
15 07 20 Plaza de las tres Culturas RalfR N3S 9297
15 07 20 Plaza de las tres Culturas RalfR N3S 9297

The Plaza de las Tres Culturas ("Square of the Three Cultures") is the main square within the Tlatelolco neighborhood of Mexico City. The name "Three Cultures" is in recognition of the three periods of Mexican history reflected by buildings in the plaza: pre-Columbian, Spanish colonial, and the independent nation. The plaza, designed by Mexican architect and urbanist Mario Pani, was completed in 1966. The square contains the archaeological site of the city-state of Tlatelolco and is flanked by the oldest European school of higher learning in the Americas called the College of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco (built in 1536 by friar Juan de Torquemada) and by a massive housing complex built in 1964. The former headquarters of the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (foreign ministry) also stands on the southern edge of the square. This headquarters now houses a memorial museum called "Memorial 68", opened by UNAM in October 2007, to remember the 1968 Mexican student demonstrations and the Tlatelolco Massacre victims and survivors. On the south side of the Plaza stands a large stone memorial erected on October 2, 1993, the 25th anniversary of the massacre, in memory of the hundreds killed.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Plaza de las Tres Culturas (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Plaza de las Tres Culturas
Avenida Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico City

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Wikipedia: Plaza de las Tres CulturasContinue reading on Wikipedia

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Latitude Longitude
N 19.451111111111 ° E -99.137222222222 °
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Zona Arquelógica Tlatelolco

Avenida Lázaro Cárdenas
Mexico City
Mexico
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15 07 20 Plaza de las tres Culturas RalfR N3S 9297
15 07 20 Plaza de las tres Culturas RalfR N3S 9297
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Conjunto Urbano Nonoalco Tlatelolco
Conjunto Urbano Nonoalco Tlatelolco

The Conjunto Urbano Nonoalco Tlatelolco (officially Conjunto Urbano Presidente López Mateos) is the largest apartment complex in Mexico, and second largest in North America, after New York's Co-op City. The complex is located in the Cuauhtémoc borough of Mexico City. It was built in the 1960s by architect Mario Pani. Originally, the complex had 102 apartment buildings, with its own schools, hospitals, stores and more, to make it a city within a city. It was also created to be a kind of human habitat and includes artwork such as murals and green spaces such as the Santiago Tlatelolco Garden. Today, the complex is smaller than it was and in a state of deterioration, mostly due to the effects and after effects of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. This quake caused the immediate collapse of the Nuevo León building with others being demolished in the months afterwards. Further earthquakes in 1993 caused the condemnation of more buildings. In addition to the lost buildings, many residents eventually undersold or abandoned their apartments, as repairs were either never made or made poorly. Today the complex consists of 90 apartment buildings, divided into three sections bordered by Avenida de los Insurgentes, Eje 1 Poniente Guerrero, Eje Central and Paseo de la Reforma. Originally, the complex was designed to house people from different economic social strata, but today almost all residents are of middle to middle-low income. Crime is a major problem, as is the structural integrity of some of the remaining buildings.

Battle of Colhuacatonco
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The Battle of Colhuacatonco was fought on 30 June 1521 during the late stages of the Siege of Tenochtitlan between Spanish-Tlaxcalan forces and the Mexica Empire (also typically referred as Aztec Empire). It is regarded as the most important victory achieved by the Mexica during the siege.The battle was fought as a result of the Spanish soldiers growing dissatisfied with the lack of progress done during the siege thus far, as the Spanish-Tlaxcalan forces had failed to take any important amount of territory since the beginning of June. Captain Hernán Cortés of the Spanish decided to launch a massive assault onto the city to take the market of Tlatelolco. The Spanish faced a much stronger resistance than expected and were eventually forced to retreat, suffering their worst losses since La Noche Triste and the Battle of Otumba a year earlier. Though much of the fighting occurred elsewhere in Tlatelolco, northern Tenochtitlan and Tacuba, the battle became known as such because most of the fighting occurred in this neighborhood; the Spaniards suffered their worst losses in this battle in this site.The battle became famous among modern historians as a result of the Spanish defeat, which was perceived as humiliating and retroactively seen as a demonstration of indigenous resistance against colonialism even in the most dire circumstances, as by this point the city was already facing widespread starvation and disease and yet still achieved victory, though the battle did not stop the city from falling to the Spanish Empire in August of the same year. The battle also became famous because Cortés narrowly escaped death during the fighting, as he was captured by multiple Mexica warriors, who typically didn't spare their prisoners, before he was rescued.