Question for February 2007

What was the emperor’s house like?? Asked by Bedgrove Junior School. Chosen and answered by Professor Frances Berdan

The Aztec ruler’s house was no ordinary house. The house of, say, a farmer or a potter would have been constructed of adobe brick walls and thatched roofs, and would have contained one room and an outdoor patio area. Now imagine a house that consisted of high walls, an enormous courtyard, patios, innumerable rooms, and as many as 100 baths. This house covered an area of 50,000 square meters, was raised on a platform and was built of stuccoed adobe or beautiful stones. It was sumptuously painted.

At one end was the entrance, along the sides of the palace were the many rooms used for the administration of the empire, and at the far end, raised above the courtyard, were the residential rooms of the ruler and his household. No, this was no ordinary house: it was the grandest dwelling in the empire, and the house of the empire’s most powerful man. It was called a tecpan calli, or “lord’s-place house”, and it was right downtown, near the city’s principal temple.

Tenochtitlan and Texcoco, as the two most powerful Aztec imperial cities, had imposing and exquisite palaces for their rulers. Actually, these rulers had more than one palace. Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin’s palace in Tenochtitlan, described just above, was probably built shortly after Motecuhzoma was installed as emperor in 1502, and today lies beneath Mexico’s national palace. A second royal palace in Tenochtitlan, also “downtown”, had served as the residential and administrative center of Motecuhzoma’s predecessors and was used by Motecuhzoma to house Hernán Cortés and his men when they first arrived in Tenochtitlan.

Motecuhzoma’s own palace served as the ruler’s residence, and must have had an extremely large living area since the ruler had several wives and therefore required a great many rooms. But the palace also served as a government meeting center, and contained administrative rooms such as courtrooms for nobles and commoners, council chambers for accomplished warriors, rooms for storing tribute, armories filled with weapons, rooms that housed all manner of servants and caretakers, and also quarters decked out to house visiting rulers. Indeed, the palace was meant to impress and intimidate royal visitors, whether friendly allies or fierce enemies. It surely did.

But it was also a pleasant place, with gardens, ponds, an aviary, and a zoo. Such a center required the presence of a huge number of people: Hernán Cortés tells us that more than 600 nobles appeared in this palace daily, and their servants overflowed two or three of the palace’s large courtyards. In addition, we must add the 200 noble guards (who resided in the palace itself) the 300 men who tended the aviary and zoo, great numbers of artisans, laborers, entertainers, cooks, servants, judges, plaintiffs, warriors, and royal wives and children. It is not hard to visualize the palace crowded with people of all walks of life bustling about, talking, working, coming, and going. It is described as a place of honor and glory, and also a place where there was much bragging, boasting, pride, arrogance, and gaudiness. The rulers did not wish to hide their wealth and power.

A very similar picture is drawn of the royal palace of neighboring Texcoco, with its central courtyard, government rooms along the sides and a raised area for the ruler’s expansive personal household at one end. It is also described with maze-like corridors, and separate meeting rooms for historians, philosophers, and poets, special passions of the Texcocan ruler. This palace too bustled with all the activity, noise, and energy of a working government and living household.

The Tenochtitlan and Texcocan rulers also periodically visited additional residences designed as horticultural gardens (with exotic plants from throughout the empire), game reserves for hunting, and “pleasure palaces” with dynastic monuments, magnificent gardens and elaborate waterworks. These “pleasure palaces” were high-class rural retreats: the Tenochtitlan rulers enjoyed the delights of Chapultepec, while the Texcocan rulers created a phenomenal hillside resort at Texcotzinco.

In truth, there were many tecpan calli throughout the empire, for there were many city-state rulers of different degrees of power and importance. Each of these rulers, of greater or lesser domains, resided in palaces much grander than the dwellings of their subjects. One of these buildings, excavated by Susan Evans in the northeastern Basin of Mexico, was four times larger than the surrounding, more humble dwellings. It also had several rooms built on different levels around a large courtyard, embellished by a liberal use of cut stones (definitely expensive and beyond the means of the typical farmer or artisan). Another such palace, excavated by Michael Smith in Morelos (just to the south of the Basin of Mexico), follows a similar pattern: the palace of the local ruler covered an area of some 6,000 square meters and consisted of numerous rooms and courtyards whose walls were covered with colorful murals.

Whether presided over by a great emperor or local ruler, these palaces were designed as both royal residences and governmental centers. They were the city’s political nerve center, just as the nearby temple was the city’s sacred ritual center.

Sources:-
Berdan, Frances. 2005. The Aztecs of Central Mexico: an imperial society. 2nd ed., Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. 1963. The Conquest of New Spain (translated by J.M.Cohen). London:Penguin Books.
Evans, Susan. 1991. “Architecture and Authority in an Aztec Village: form and function of the Tecpan”. In Land and Politics in the Valley of Mexico (H.R.Harvey, ed.): 63-92. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Sahagún, Bernardino de. 1950-82. Florentine Codex, Book 11: 270-271. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Smith, Michael E. 2003. The Aztecs. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.

Illustrations:-
Pic 1: Codex Mendoza, folio 69r (original in the Bodleian Library, Oxford), (scanned from the Cooper Clark facsimile edition, London, 1938)
Pic 2: Codex Mendoza, folio 32r (scanned from the Cooper Clark facsimile edition, London, 1938)
Pic 3: Quinatzin Map Codex (lower half) ‘Palace of Nezahualcóyotl and toponomy’ (original in the National Library of France), reproduction part of the study ‘Códice Mapa Quinatzin: Justicia y derechos humanos en el México antiguo’ by Luz María Mohar Betancourt, CIESAS, Mexico, 2004
Pic 4: Códice Mapa Quinatzin, p. 146
Pic 5: Illustration by Felipe Dávalos
Pics 6 & 7:Florentine Codex, Book 11, facsimile edition published by the Club Internacional del Libro (Madrid, 1994)
Pic 8: from ‘The Aztecs’ by Richard Townsend, Thames and Hudson, London, 2000, p. 146 (photo by Richard Townsend)

Professor Frances Berdan has answered 4 questions altogether.

What was the emperor’s house like?

When did the Aztecs stop using cacao beans for money?

Did being poor in Aztec times affect you in the afterlife? (1)

How long would it take to make a huipil? (2)

Comments (7)

Morgan

6th Nov 2023

what did it look like inside the rooms of the palace?

Mexicolore

There are precious few details for us to go on. As you can read from Professor Berdan’s answer here, the palace was ‘sumptuously painted’ with murals. According to first-hand witness Bernal Díaz, the palace rooms were ‘canopied’ and ‘garlanded’. His compatriot Francisco de Aguilar adds: ‘There were canopied beds with mattresses made of large mantles, and pillows of leather and tree fibre; good quilts, and admirable white fur robes; also very well made wooden seats, and fine matting...’

Morgan

1st Nov 2023

About how many rooms are in the palace

Mexicolore

We know the palace of King Netzahualcoyotl of Texcoco (the twin city of Tenochtitlan) had over 300 rooms (part of this would be public buildings and part private) so no doubt Moctezuma’s palace would have been as big if not bigger. The Spanish chronicler López de Gómara says that the tecpan (palace) of the emperor had many halls, a hundred rooms and a hundred baths. We don’t think anyone knows for sure, but a few hundred!

Tayatay

21st Feb 2023

Wow! This was super helpful! Thank you!

Taytay

3rd Dec 2022

Hi again! I wondering what dining rooms/dining halls were like in noble houses and palaces in the Aztec empire. Did nobles dine sitting on reed mats or on furniture? Were tables used? Did they use cutlery or did they eat with their hands?
Also, did the emperor have a kitchen indoors, or was his food cooked in outside ovens like in the lower classes?

Mexicolore

Thanks for your questions.
As far as we know, nobles sat on fine reed mats - though these would have been raised on low earthen platforms or wooden benches, but no tables!
No cutlery either. There were strict etiquette rules regarding eating with the hands: we find this in the Huehuetlahtolli (speeches of the elders) - ‘Do not use all your fingers when you eat, but only the three fingers of your right hand’...
We’re not sure about the emperor having an indoor kitchen - we doubt it, but will need to check!

Aardvark-Kun

12th Dec 2019

What is the approximate size of the gardens alone? (Not including aviary, palace, etc.)

Mexicolore

To give one reference, we know that by the time the Spanish came on the scene, Moctezuma II’s royal gardens at Huaxtepec extended over 7 miles in circumference and held some 2,000 species of herbs, shrubs and trees.

Jeanette Rangel perez

22nd Mar 2018

How long,tall,and wide the palaces

Mexicolore

We know that Moctezuma II’s palace covered an area of 2.4 hectares (around 5 acres). Nezahualcoyotl’s palace in Texcoco was probably of the same size. His entire compound - including palace, gardens, temples, ball court, zoo, market plus numerous buildings measured 1,032 by 817m, an area of some 84 hectares (over 200 acres)!

Kyle

28th Feb 2017

Another question, sorry. Why, in most of the post-colonial codices I’ve seen, are the Aztecs dressed in a white robe?

Mexicolore

Good question, and apologies for the delay in responding.
This is due to the ‘Toltec effect’: the Aztecs had tremendous reverential respect for their perceived ancestors the Toltecs, from whom the Aztecs felt they had inherited all the most important aspects of their culture. To associate themselves with high social status and a ‘civilised’ way of life, they tried where possible to depict themselves in white robes (in Texcocan codices, Toltecs are invariably dressed in white capes).