Palace of Cortés, Cuernavaca
The building began as a fortified residence for conqueror Hernán Cortés and his aristocratic second wife, Doña Juana Zúñiga.
As Cortés's residence, it reached its height in the 1530s, but the family eventually abandoned it due to on-going legal troubles.
On the site of this palace a tribute gathering place originally stood, first for Tlahuican rulers, then (after they conquered what is now Morelos in the 15th century) for the Aztecs.
In 1526, shortly after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, the conquistador Hernando Cortés had the pre-Hispanic building destroyed and a palace for himself built in its place.
[3][4] Much smaller than the building today (the central part of the extant structure, marked by the use of arches on the balconies, corresponds to Cortés's construction), the original palacio was erected as a fortress, with thick walls, merlons, and other defensive elements, and held its own armory stocked with arquebusses, muskets, cannon, and other weapons.
[4] Befitting the conqueror of Mexico and the Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca, Cortés had his residence furnished and decorated richly; the walls were covered with twenty one tapestries, the chapel contained crosses and other religious items in gold and silver.
During one of his visits to the palace, he was attacked by Tlahuican warriors who tried to kill him at the place now called the Callejón del Diablo ("Devil’s Alley").
The attack is documented, though a later legend is not: it proclaims that Cortés reached safety by jumping a five-meter-wide crevice on his horse, Rucio.
Their son and heir, Don Martín Cortés, 2nd Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca was born at this palace,[5][7] but the conquistador himself did not spend much time here.
Instead, he spent most of his time after the conquest organizing expeditions, building ships on the Pacific coast, touring his encomienda holdings as marquess, and introducing such crops as sugar cane with success.
[5] After Cortés's death, his son Don Martin, as the new Marquéz del Valle de Oaxaca, inherited this palace.
During the Mexican War of Independence, the former palace housed famous prisoners, José María Morelos y Pavon and Ignacio López Rayón amongst them.
[6] In 1855, the palacio was the site of the provisional government of the territory ruled by Mexican liberal Juan Álvarez as he fought against conservative Antonio López de Santa Anna.
In the same year, Governor Francisco Leyva expanded the north end and had the stairwell and other areas redone in a then-popular French style.
[6] Between 1971 and 1973, the Department of Colonial Monuments of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia worked to recover the basic form of the sixteenth-century palace, using building techniques of that period and studying the archeology of the original sections.
[8] The museum has nineteen halls, which feature a collection of objects from the history of the state of Morelos, beginning with its earliest human settlers to the present day.
Through strategically placed wells, the project uncovered various walls, floors, burials and other elements from the Tlahuica to colonial eras.
