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Places

Salamanca

A city in Castile known for its university and its great square, which Cortés used as a measure for the market square of Tenochtitlan.

Today: Salamanca, Castile and León, Spain

The Great Market of Tenochtitlan

Hernán Cortés, second letter to Emperor Charles V, October 30, 1520 (the market of Tenochtitlan) · dated October 30, 1520; printed at Seville, 1522 (describes the city as Cortés saw it in 1519–1520)

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Tiene esta ciudad muchas plazas, donde hay continuos mercados y trato de comprar y vender. Tiene otra plaza tan grande como dos veces la de la ciudad de Salamanca, toda cercada de portales al rededor, donde hay cotidianamente arriba de sesenta mil ánimas comprando y vendiendo; donde hay todos los géneros de mercadurías que en todas las tierras se hallan, así de mantenimientos como de vituallas, joyas de oro y de plata, de plomo, de laton, de cobre, de estaño, de piedras, de huesos, de conchas, de caracoles y de plumas; véndese cal, piedra labrada y por labrar, adobes, ladrillos, madera labrada y por labrar de diversas maneras.

This city has many squares, where markets are always going on and people buy and sell. There is one square twice as large as the square of Salamanca, surrounded on every side by arcades. Every day more than sixty thousand people gather there to buy and sell. Every kind of goods found in any land is there: food and provisions, and jewelry of gold and silver, lead, brass, copper, tin, stones, bones, shells, snail shells, and feathers. They sell lime, stone both cut and uncut, adobes, bricks, and timber, both shaped and rough, of many kinds.