Mexico City
Pictures

Images: an aerial shot of the sprawling city; a tiled building north of the Zocalo [central square]; the Cathedral in the Zocalo.

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Mexico City was created by the Aztecs, a group of outcasts from a northern tribe who were banished for their belief in the efficacy of human sacrifice, unlike the builders of Teotihuacan, the Toltecs, who did not, and disappeared for no apparent reason long before the Aztecs slunk into town. The Maya people further south in what is now the Yucatan and Guatemala also thought it essential to take human life to placate or encourage various gods.
Human sacrifice as practiced by the Aztecs and Maya generally involved captured enemies and was a respectable, even honorable way to die, so when prisoners were in short supply or gods required someone specific local volunteers were used, sometimes drugged, sometimes not.
The favoured method of execution [aka The Flowery Death] was outside a dedicated temple on top of a pyramid, where the sacrifice was laid/held down on a large stone while the priest slashed across the ribs with a broad obsidian [sharpened stone] knife, quickly levering open two ribs with the knife enabling the priest to reach in and tear out the heart while the person was still alive. The heart would than be mashed onto or into the mouth of the god's statue or an appropriate bowl for the god's consumption and the body would be thrown or kicked down the steps to the base where occasionally body parts would be eaten for ceremonial purposes or distributed to the poor.
On the dedication of the Great Pyramid in Tenochitlan [now Mexico City] in 1521 there were reputed to have been tens of thousands of sacrifices. The Great Pyramid was destroyed by the Spanish and is not Teotihuacan.

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