Source: WTL photograph taken in Chapultepec Park, Mexico City.
Comments: Here is the entrance to the National History Museum situated in the former Castillo de Chapultepec, which sits atop Chapultepec Hill (45 m high). The hill once rose up from the western shore of Lake Texcoco during the precontact period. The hill has been occupied continuously from the teotihuacanos to the toltecas to the mexica-aztecas. During the Aztec empire the supreme leader (emperor or tlatoani) had a palace here. At the base of the hill was a spring that supplied fresh water to Tenochtitlán. The pool at the base of the spring is where it is said that Moctezuma Ilhuicamina (1397-1469) bathed. He had the aqueducts built connecting the mainland to the island of Tenochtitlán. In the 19th century Maximilian and Carlota also bathed in the same pool. After Cortés' conquest in 1521, he took over the site, lodging his mistress Malinalli in the Aztec palace, but in 1530 Carlos V's mother, queen Juana I (called la Loca) ordered Chapultepec preserved as a city park for all the city's residents. In the 18th century, two viceroys had the current palace (castle; castillo) built. In the 19th century this building housed the Colegio Militar, and it was the residence of Maximilian and Carlota, the French emperor and his wife. In 1939, it was converted into its current use as the Museo Nacional de Historia.