To the side of the National Palace is the street of Moneda, during the nineteenth century, received that curious name because in number 13 was the old Casa de Moneda. Here, during the colonial period, almost all the money that circulated in New Spain was minted.
Almost opposite this historic building (which today houses the Museum of Cultures) is the former palace of the Archbishop’s Palace, a building now converted into a colonial religious art museum.
In the north courtyard of this institution, in a corner you can admire the remains of what were the original great stairs that led to the top of the Temple of Tezcatlipoca.
Bernal Diaz says (page 170) that ‘Tezcatlipuca was the god of hell and in his temple the walls were so encrusted with blood, and on the ground so bathed in it, that not even the slaughterhouses of Castilla stank so badly.’ The effect of human sacrifices in societies always includes moral and cultural degeneration, and in the Aztec civilization this reached its zenith.
Tezcatlipoca is one of the most important deities of the Mexica pantheon, and whose the building stood on one side of the Templo Mayor.
