The House of the Eagles in Templo Mayor opens its roof

The Casa de las Águilas del Templo Mayor, one of the points of patrimonial value of the first order in ground zero of the Historic Center of Mexico City and, due to the importance of its vestiges, one of those that require the greatest protection, is opening new roof after more than a year of meticulous disassembly and restoration work on the old structure, which collapsed on the night of April 28 last year due to an atypical hailstorm that fell on the Mexican capital.

For this new structure, it was detailed this Tuesday during the official reopening tour led by the federal Secretary of Culture, Alejandra Frausto Guerrero, and the director of the Templo Mayor Museum, Patricia Ledesma Bouchan, it was decided to repeat with a tridilosa, that is, an inclined three-dimensional structure that supports a galvaroof, although with much lighter and more resistant polymers than those with which the roof that protected this site for more than 40 years was made.

The lightness of the materials allowed the expansion of the roof to reach a total area of ​​800 square meters that allow a more effective protection of the site, for problems such as water infiltration during the rainy season. The final cost of the work was 14 million pesos plus VAT, which was paid by the insurance of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) with Agroasemex.

“Someone asked me why we didn’t make a roof like the one in the Louvre. I explained to him that we are in a site that is part of the World Heritage Site, so we had to take care that the modern roof did not compete with the historical buildings. It has to be a discreet modern construction. On the other hand, we could not put very large supports, because we would be destroying the pre-Hispanic floor. They also asked me why we had not put up a velaria, but a structure of this type requires a lot of maintenance and, in addition, in the Historic Center the levels of contamination and acid rain are terrible. The galvaroof is the most resistant for these purposes with a useful life of between 10 and 15 years with constant maintenance, ”shared the official, although she indicated that once this period has passed, only the polymer cover should be changed.

The design of this new roof was the responsibility of the company TGC Ingeniería, which decided to use the same support points of the previous structure (12 in total) so as not to invade the interior of the vestiges; however, these points were reinforced with concrete without affect the basement and from these points the exits are now vertex-shaped and not vertical, which allows the structure to support much more weight.

Recognizes the work of Matos

In the conference and tour, the absence of the INAH director, Diego Prieto Hernández, and the archaeologist and anthropologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, founder of the Templo Mayor Project, stood out.

Referring to this year’s winner of the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, Frausto Guerrero declared: “the Templo Mayor is a living place, it will always be manifesting itself and what corresponds to us in our time, as public servants, is to preserve it, make the necessary safeguard plans. There has been an extraordinary urban archeology team here for decades, which has allowed us to discover these treasures, of course with the multi-award-winning Maestro Matos at the helm”.

For his part, José Luis Perea González, technical secretary of the INAH, on behalf of Diego Prieto Hernández, expanded that the renovation works in the Templo Mayor have not yet finished. The next step will be the replacement of the roofs of Stage 2 and the north and south Red temples, whose structures are the same age as the roof of the Casa de las Águilas, so it is also necessary to guarantee the protection of these areas with the new materials.

“These works will be carried out in the remainder of this year thanks to a budget increase provided by the Ministry of Culture. We expect to finish during the first quarter of 2023. In addition, the modernization of the museum’s electrical infrastructure is being carried out”. For these works, it was indicated that Federal Culture contributed 7 million pesos.

The relevance of the House of Eagles

The Casa de las Águilas was not really an integral building of the Templo Mayor but a very close building. This suggests that it was a very important point where, according to the studies of Leonardo López Luján, private ceremonies of the Mexica high nobility were very possibly held. In this site you can see neo-Toltec style high reliefs that give evidence of self-sacrifice rituals carried out by rulers, priests and warriors. “It is probable that the rituals for the change of ruler were carried out here. When one died, his remains were brought here, they were kept for a couple of days and the new ruler did penance here, ”said the director of the Templo Mayor Museum.

ricardo.quiroga@eleconomista.mx