Canal del Norte station

Neighbouring stations

• 5Line 5Río Consulado ← Canal del Norte → Deportivo Eduardo Molina

The story behind the icon

Canal del Norte. The station image represents a section of the northern canal.

In the colonial period a canal was built linking the centre of Mexico City with the Villa; it was opened in 1780 and was one of the favourite promenades of viceregal times. This is what is known today as the Canal del Norte.

Since the Aztecs did not know draught or pack animals, transport was carried out solely by waterways, and so the whole system of lakes in the valley was crossed by a veritable network of canals and deep channels, many of them built artificially, along which an enormous number of canoes moved.

Around the years 1603 and 1604 there were no canals for travelling by canoe to the Villa de Guadalupe. The whole journey was almost always made on foot, and only by one of the two roads that then existed: one was the present Calzada de Guadalupe, at that time a badly cobbled road built over countless paddocks, most of them covered with water for almost the whole year; the other was a dirt track that in the rainy season turned into vast quagmires. That road is today the Calzada de los Misterios.