Sacred Precinct and Surrounding Buildings
The Sacred Precinct of the Templo Mayor encompassed an area of almost 4,000 square meters (43,000 square feet) and it was surrounded by a wall called the "coatepantli" (serpent wall). Among the most important buildings were the ballcourt, the Calmecac (area for priests), and the temples dedicated to Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca and the sun. The Templo Mayor itself delineated the eastern side of the Sacred Precinct.
On the sides of the Templo Mayor, archeologists have excavated a number of palatial rooms and conjoining structures. One of the best preserved and most important is the Palace (or House) of the Eagle Warriors. This area dates back to the fourth stage of the temple, around 1469. It was excavated in 1981 and 1982 by José Francisco Hinojosa. It is a large L-shaped room with staircases decorated with sculptures of eagle heads. To enter this main room, one had to pass through an entrance guarded by two large sculpted representations of these warriors. The Eagle Warriors were a privileged class who were dedicated to the god Huitzilopochtli, and dressed to look like eagles. Adjoining this palace is the temple for these warriors—also known as the Red Temple. This temple shows clear Teotihuacan influence in its paintings (mostly in red) and the design of its altar. Almost all the interior walls of the House of the Eagles are decorated with beautiful paintings and contain long benches, which are also painted. These benches are composed of two panels. The upper one is a frieze with undulating serpents in bas-relief. The lower panel shows processions of armed warriors converging on a zacatapayolli, a grass ball into which the Mexica stuck bloody lancets during the ritual of autosacrifice. This palace specifically imitates much of the style of the Burnt Palace, located in the ruins of Tula. A number of important artifacts have been found in this area, the most important of which are two nearly identical large ceramic sculptures of Mictlantecuhtl, the god of death. Despite being found in fragile pieces, they were both reconstructed and are on display at the on-site museum.
Another conjoining area was dedicated to the Ocelot Warriors. Their temple, dedicated to the god Tezcatlipoca, lies under the current Museo de la Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público to the south of the Templo Mayor.
The Calmecac was a residence hall for priests and a school for future priests, administrators and politicians, where they studied theology, literature, history and astronomy. Its exact location is on one side of what is now Donceles Street. The Temple of Quetzalcoatl was located to the west of the Templo Mayor. It is said that during the equinox, the sun rose between the shrines dedicated to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc and shone directly on this temple. Due to the god’s serpentine nature, the temple had a circular base instead of a rectangular one.
The ball field, called the tlachtli or teutlachtli, was similar to many sacred ball fields in Mesoamerica. Games were played barefoot, and players used their hips to move a heavy ball to stone rings. The field was located west of the Templo Mayor, near the twin staircases and oriented east-west. Next to this ball field was the "huey tzompanti" where the skulls of sacrifice victims were kept after being covered in stucco and decorated.
The Temple of the Sun was located west of the Templo Mayor also and its remains lie under the Metropolitan Cathedral. The project to shore up the cathedral at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st brought to light a number of artifacts.
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