Aqueduct of Padre Tembleque
Acueducto del Padre Tembleque
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- UNESCO describes the main arcade as the highest single-level arcade ever built in an aqueduct from Roman times to the mid-16th century.
- Instead of timber scaffolding, the builders raised the arches over a formwork of adobe, a local building method adapted to a new purpose.
- The system fuses Roman masonry aqueduct design, Arab-Andalusian water management and the Indigenous tradition of collective communal labour.
- In 1960 the scholar Ángel María Garibay studied 44 painted symbols on the main arcade; a later survey counted 73 on its west face.
- Besides the main arcade, two smaller arcades of 46 and 13 arches carry the channel across other ravines along the route.
- The underground channels lie anywhere from a few centimetres to about two metres below the surface.
- Construction took roughly seventeen years before water flowed into the central fountain of Otumba.
- Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza authorised the project, which Tembleque planned and directed himself.
Why it is worth it
On the dry plateau north-east of Mexico City, a line of tall arches striding across the Papalote ravine near the village of Santiago Tepeyahualco is the visible crown of the most important hydraulic work of sixteenth-century New Spain. The Aqueduct of Padre Tembleque carried spring water from the slopes of the Tecajete volcano to the Indigenous towns of Otumba and Zempoala and the villages along the way. It was inscribed by UNESCO in 2015 as the Hydraulic System of the Aqueduct of Padre Tembleque.
The project was the life's work of Francisco de Tembleque, a Franciscan friar from the province of Toledo who arrived in 1542 and, seeing how the lack of water afflicted the people of Otumba, set out to bring it from springs more than 40 km away. The system was built from the 1550s onwards, largely by Indigenous communities, and a written agreement of 1553 in which the leaders of Zacuala agreed to share their water with Otumba survives. The main channel ran for well over 40 km, with a branch to Zempoala, and roughly 95 per cent of it runs underground or at ground level.
The great arcade is the moment of drama. Around 900 metres long, it carries the channel across the Papalote ravine on nearly seventy round arches, the highest reaching 38.75 metres. The west face of the arcade bears dozens of painted symbols that some researchers read as pre-Hispanic religious, military and calendrical signs left by the builders. A railway line still passes under one of the arches.
Other, smaller arcades survive along the route at former haciendas and near Otumba, and at Zempoala, about 10 km north, the Franciscans were building their monastery of Todos los Santos when the water agreement was signed. The main arcade is in open countryside, and the best light for photographs is early or late in the day.
Getting there
The main arcade lies about 1 km south-east of Santiago Tepeyahualco, on the border between the State of Mexico and Hidalgo, roughly 80 km north-east of central Mexico City; the usual route is the Mexico–Tulancingo road past Teotihuacan, turning off towards Nopaltepec or San Felipe Teotitlán. Otumba is about 30 km to the south and Zempoala about 10 km to the north; the town of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún is about 11 km away. The nearest airport is Felipe Ángeles International (NLU), about 38 km away. A car is the practical way to visit.
Plan your visit
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Nearby places
- Teotihuacan 24.8 km · archaeological-site
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Aqueduct of Padre Tembleque, or Tembleque Aqueduct, is a Mexican aqueduct located between the towns of Zempoala, Hidalgo, and Otumba in the State of Mexico.
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