☰Templo Mayor

Just east of the cathedral on the Zócalo are the excavated remains of the Templo Mayor, the principal temple of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan. The Spanish built their cathedral directly on top of it in the 1520s; the pyramid was rediscovered in 1978 when electrical workers struck a carved stone disc of the goddess Coyolxauhqui. The adjoining museum is excellent — small enough to do in an hour, with the original disc, ritual offerings, and a good model of how the temple looked when Cortés first saw it.