Mapping the Aztec capital: The 1524 Nuremberg map of Tenochtitlan, its sources and meanings

The map of Tenochtitlan published along with a Latin version of Hernán Cortés's letters (Nuremberg, 1524) was the first picture Europeans had of the Culhua-Mexica city, the capital of the Aztec empire. The source of this woodcut map is unknown, and the author argues here that it was based on an indigenous map of the city. Once published in Europe, the city map and its companion map of the Gulf Coast, while certainly documentary, also assumed a symbolic function in supporting Cortés's (and thereby Spain's) just conquest of the Amerindian empire.