There is no place in the world like the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Mexico City.
This plaza contains buildings from all of the people who have lived in Mexico - Aztec, Spanish and contemporary Mexican. The oldest are the 700-year-old ruins of Tlatelolco, a city-state that was built hundreds of years before Columbus sailed into the Americas. Next to that stands the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, an engineering school built by Franciscan monks in the 1500's and the Templo de Santiago, a Catholic church built with some of the stones from the ancient pyramids. Finally, el Centro Cultual Universitario of the National University of Mexico, built in 1964, completes the plaza.
The plaza has seen Mexico City grow from chinampas to sky-scrapers and everything in between. When the Aztecs ruled Mexico, the site was a roaring, bustling market filled with goods from across the Americas. In 1521, the Spaniards under Cortes completed their conquest of Mexico, winning a brutal, bloody battle in the shadow of those temples. In 1968 during a student protest, Mexican military soldiers and helicopters with machine guns slaughtered hundreds of people during a government crackdown. Now, the Plaza de las Culturas is a beautiful attraction in Mexico City that attracts thousands of tourists who eat churros and tacos al pastor, pose for Instagram and enjoy the wide, open space in the middle of a city of almost 9 million people.
