Baños de Moctezuma

The Baños de Moctezuma lie in the first section of Chapultepec Park, at the corner of Calzada Mahatma Gandhi and the path that comes down from the Mercado de las Flores, south of the hill. The name suggests a private bath for the Mexica ruler, but INAH says that is not what it was: it is a pre-Hispanic water container, fed by gravity from the most important spring on the hill, the one that rose beside the so-called Alberca de Moctezuma. The tank stayed in use under the viceroyalty and supplied haciendas south of the hill, such as La Condesa. Legend has it Moctezuma hid his treasure here, and in 1744 the spot was dug up in search of it.

The name came much later. In 1870 José Amor y Escandón, who held the concession for the pool, opened the Casa Baños de Chapultepec across from it, a set of curative-water pools that was the fashionable place to go until it declined from 1881. The city council bought the land, tore the baths down and added it to the park; around 1900, when the first section was laid out, the old container began to be called Baños de Moctezuma, and it was spruced up for the 1910 Independence centenary.

In 2018 INAH archaeologists uncovered three pools in a row near Calzada Gandhi, each 6 by 4.5 metres and a metre deep with rounded corners, with remains of orange clay tiles and steps. They belong to the nineteenth-century bathhouse. What you see today is a quiet corner among gardens and information boards rather than a large archaeological zone, so it pairs best with a wider walk through the park.