"This city has many squares where trading is done and markets are held continuously. There is also one square twice as big as that of Salamanca, with arcades all around, where more than sixty thousand people come each day to buy and sell, and where every kind of merchandise produced in these lands is found... Each kind of merchandise is sold in its own street without any mixture whatever; they are very particular in this."

Hernán Cortés, Second Letter to Charles V, written from Tenochtitlan, 30 October 1520. The letter describes the Aztec capital, which Cortés had entered and then been forced to flee during the Noche Triste (30 June 1520).