Templo Mayor (CDMX)

Mexico City. The ancient Hispanic cathedral in the zocalo is built on top of temples in the center of the sacred lake of the Mexicas. Templo Mayor is the excavation site and museum next to the cathedral. 

The excavation itself feels like a living place because there are groups of anthropology students at work.

Like most museums in Mexico, guards direct the visitors and force them to move through the museum in a linear fashion, preventing visitors from free-roaming. It often doesn't make sense to control the visitor that way.

Gallery spaces are designed in sympathy with the temples themselves, using stepping, up and down to various levels, and step shaping to the cases. It resonates with the temples, and allows variety of movement for visitors, breaking the monotony of viewing relics along walls. Sometimes the view is directly down into a case, or through a cut out in the floor.

Some stepping allows seating. Beautiful black slate flooring.

Cut glass, wall texture

Some of the Relics are huge, and need to be seen from a distance. This one, viewed from above through a hole in the floor, has a progressive projection showing how it was originally painted.