Tenochtitlan rises from Lake Texcoco

The Mexica built their capital on an island, engineering causeways, aqueducts and chinampa gardens into one of the world's largest cities.

Why it matters

When Spaniards saw Tenochtitlan in 1519 they compared it to Venice — clean streets, ordered markets, hundreds of thousands of people. Mesoamerican engineering had reached a sophistication Europe then destroyed in the conquest.

Related events

• 250 CE – 900 CE

  The Maya classic era: cities of the calendar

  Maya city-states developed the most sophisticated pre-Columbian script and astronomical calendars, recording dynasties and sky events in stone.

  Civilizations · americas

• c. 100 CE – 550 CE

  Teotihuacan becomes the Americas' first metropolis

  A planned city of perhaps 100,000 people with monumental pyramids, apartment compounds and apparent multiethnic governance rose in the Basin of Mexico.

  Civilizations · americas

• 1492 – 1504

  Columbus reaches the Americas

  Seeking a western route to Asia, Columbus's four voyages connected two human worlds that had been separate for over ten millennia.

  Exploration

Sources

• Encyclopædia Britannica — Tenochtitlán