Texcotzingo

Tetzcotzingo is an archaeological site dating from the late Postclassic in the Valley of Mexico, around 7 kilometers east of Texcoco. It is situated on the foothills of Cerro Tlaloc in around 2500 m altitude and is freely accessible. The buildings of the Tetzcotzingo be the ruler of Texcoco, Nezahualcóyotl attributed, who has created a first landscape garden with water features in the 15th century. The first descriptions come from a native of the ruling house of Teztcoco colonial times historian Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl. After 1968, Jeffrey R. Parsons performs a first ascent, surgical exploration and reconstruction was made in 1981.

The ruins consist of three parts:

• The palace on the top of the mountain
• The supply system with reservoirs and dams, channels connecting the feedline on the east neighboring hill
• The distribution system consisting of two water lines that the Tetzcotzingo Mountain orbit starting from the feedline dam on its north and south sides and come together again and feed the various carved into the stone basin.

The Palace

At the top of Tetzcotzingo are several large, step-like arranged platforms. They may have served as foundations for light structures, but their existence and function remain uncertain. According to other authors, it is more of dance platforms. Another building complex, which is referred to as a palace, is below the Baño del Rey and was connected to it by a narrow hewn into the rock Trteppe.

The delivery system

From a situated at an altitude of 2750 m source 5 km southeast of the Tetzcotzingo the water over height line parallel channels was conducted to Tetzcotzingo. Here the east of nearby Cerro Tetzcotzingo Metecatl was almost completely surrounded. Then the water came over several reservoirs and basins to a large, today reconstructed aqueduct of 160 m in length led to Cerro Tetzcotzingo. The Aquäduktdämme consisted of a broad system of stones and a narrower masonry dam, was on the crown of the relatively narrow actual channel. The channels were bricked up from not trimmed stones and probably inside covered with lime mortar.

The water source is today run at about 1 km in length by the old canal, then through a very long, probably too old channel leading into the plane.

The distribution system

At the point at which the second aqueduct encounters the Cerro Tetzcotzingo, the channel divides and also runs parallel line height in the south and on the steeper northern side of the mountain. The canal was here also mostly brick, but there are also smaller portions at which the channel was cut in the rock. The diameter of the channel was approximately 25 × 25 cm. In numerous places at regular intervals chain of these channels from distributions which usually consisted of a large block of stone, in which a channel was dug. From this water could be passed either on the slopes of the mountain, where gardens are to be accepted or, consecutively staggered part as cascades. In round, hewn in the rock pools, in which also resulted stone steps into Also access stairs were carved out of the rock. These basins bear fanciful names, such as Baño del Rey, Baño de la Reina, and Baño de las Concubinas (bath of the king, the queen and the concubines ) today.

The Cerro Tetzcotzingo was not the only such system. For the far northern Cerro Purificación very similar systems are described. There are two longer aqueducts of 375 and 400 m and heights up to 13 meters available that are still in operation.