Editing Tenochtitlan (section)

===Colonial era===
{{Main|History of Mexico City}}
[[File:Barrios Tenochtitlan OSM2.png|thumb|upright|Districts of Tenochtitlan overlaid on a map of modern streets of Mexico City, with the {{lang|es|traza}} shown in gray]]
Cortés founded the Spanish capital of Mexico City on the ruins of Tenochtitlan. Despite the extensive damage to the built environment, the site retained symbolic power and legitimacy as the capital of the Aztec empire, which Cortés sought to appropriate. For a time this {{lang|es|ciudad de españoles}}, the highest rank in the Spanish hierarchy of settlement designation, was called Mexico–Tenochtitlan. [[Charles Gibson (historian)|Charles Gibson]] devotes the final chapter of his classic work, ''The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule'', to what he called "The City",<ref>Charles Gibson, ''The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule''. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1964.</ref> with later historians building on his work.<ref>Barbara Munday, ''The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City''. Austin: University of  Texas Press 2016. {{ISBN| 978-1477317136}}</ref> The Spaniards established a {{lang|es|[[cabildo (council)|cabildo]]}} or town council, which had jurisdiction over the Spanish residents. The Spanish established a Europeans-only zone in the center of the city, an area of 13 blocks in each direction of the central plaza, which was the {{lang|es|traza}}.  Although many native residents died during the siege of Tenochtitlan, the indigenous still had a strong presence in the city, and were settled in two main areas of the island, designated San Juan Tenochtitlan and Santiago Tlatelolco, each with a municipal council that functioned the entire colonial period. San Juan Tenochtitlan was a Spanish administrative creation, which amalgamated four indigenous sections, with each losing territory to the Spanish {{lang|es|traza}}. The Spanish laid out the streets of the {{lang|es|traza}} in a checker board pattern, with straight streets and plazas at intervals, whereas the indigenous portions of the city were irregular in layout and built of modest materials. In the colonial period both San Juan Tenochtitlan and Santiago Tlatelolco retained jurisdiction over settlements on the mainland that they could draw on for labor and tribute demanded by the Spanish, but increasingly those subordinate settlements ({{lang|es|sujetos}}) were able to gain their autonomy with their own rulers and separate relationship with the Spanish rulers.<ref>Gibson, ''Aztecs Under Spanish Rule'', pp. 368–377.</ref> Concern about the health of the indigenous population in early post-conquest Mexico–Tenochtitlan led to the founding of a royal hospital for indigenous residents.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Leiby |first=John S. |title=The Royal Indian Hospital of Mexico City, 1553–1680. |journal=The Historian |volume=57 |issue=3 |year=1995 |pages=573–580 |jstor=24451466 |doi=10.1111/j.1540-6563.1995.tb02021.x }}</ref>

There are a number of colonial-era pictorial manuscripts dealing with Tenochtitlan–Tlatelolco, which shed light on litigation between Spaniards and indigenous over property.<ref>Glass, John B. in collaboration with Donald Robertson. "A Census of Native Middle American Pictorial Manuscripts". article 23, ''Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources'' Part 3; ''Handbook of Middle American Indians''. University of Texas Press 1975, census #209, 210 p. 166–167.{{ISBN|0-292-70154-3}}</ref> An account with information about the war of Tenochtitlan against its neighbor Tlatelolco in 1473 and the Spanish conquest in 1521 is the {{lang|es|Anales de Mexico y Tlatelolco, 1473, 1521–22|italic=yes}}.<ref>Glass and Robertson. "A Census of Native Middle American Pictorial Manuscripts". article 23, census #211 p. 167.{{ISBN|0-292-70154-3}}</ref> Anthropologist Susan Kellogg has studied colonial-era inheritance patterns of Nahuas in Mexico City, using [[Nahuatl]]- and Spanish-language testaments.<ref>Susan Kellogg, ''Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture, 1500–1700''. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press 1995.</ref> 
On the 13th of August 1521, after over two months of fighting, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés succeeded in bringing about the fall of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire, and consequently brought an end to the Aztec empire.