500 years later, a hospital started by a Spanish conqueror still thrives in Mexico City

MEXICO CITY – In Mexico City’s bustling historic center, the Hospital de Jesus covers most of a city block. Its faded unassuming yellow facade, characteristic of the middle of the last century, obscures the medical center within founded 500 years ago by Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés.

Entering between street-level shoe stores, visitors find the oldest continuously operating hospital in the Americas. Stone arches lead to expansive patios filled with lush vegetation.

The hospital was founded to treat the conquering Spanish, then later opened to the local Indigenous inhabitants to ensure a healthy workforce. Today it provides 24/7 emergency care, as well as affordable access to medical specialists for current residents of what was at the time of its founding the center of the Aztec empire.

“You can feel the Mexican heritage here,” said Dr. Pedro Álvarez Sánchez. “For 500 years, the hospital has never closed its doors.”

On Nov. 8, 1519, Cortés and his soldiers entered Tenochtitlan, the Aztec name for the capital, and met Aztec emperor Moctezuma in a place known as Huitzilan, just in front of the present-day hospital.

Cortés had conquered the city by 1521, and to honor that original encounter, he founded the hospital in 1524.

The meeting of Cortés and Moctezuma is depicted in a floor-to-ceiling tile mural beside one of the central patios. The main temple of Tenochtitlan — only a few blocks from the hospital — sits in the background. The union of two suns represents the meeting of two cultures.

Cortés is buried in a small church adjacent to the hospital. Descendants of him and Moctezuma met here in 2019 to mark the anniversary of that initial encounter.

Around the world, only a handful of hospitals can boast such longevity. For example, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London founded in 1123 and Bellevue Hospital in New York City founded in 1736 also continue to provide full medical services.

Much of the hospital has remained intact thanks to a board of trustees founded in the 16th century. Over the years, countless doctors have quietly worked to conserve the hospital’s mission of affordable care and to preserve the building’s unique architectural features.

“We want to ensure that this hospital continues to provide quality medical attention to patients,” said Dr. Octaviano Rosalez Serafín, 71, president of the hospital’s board of trustees. “We want to continue the tradition of care the hospital has had for years.”

Celia Chávez Escamilla, 56, arrived at the hospital at dawn recently for an appointment with her dermatologist. “Here they take good care of us,” said Chávez. “The prices here are accessible. If you go somewhere else it’s too expensive.” Her consultation was just 400 pesos or under $20.

Escamilla was accompanied by her daughter Myriam Rafael Sanchez, 26, who was fascinated by the medical center. “I’ve seen (the hospital) a lot in movies and TV shows,” she said excitedly. “We have all of Mexico’s history around us.”

The hospital didn’t always serve the entire public, according to Sandra Elena Guevara Flores, an anthropologist focusing on medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Guevara said the hospital was not open to the Indigenous population initially, but only to the Spanish who had recently arrived in the Americas.

However, as epidemics began to spread, the hospital opened its doors to more patients. “It was a strategy by the Spanish governors in the new Spain to treat the whole population,” said Guevara. “It (was) so the servants and the whole labor system wouldn’t die.”

Early Spanish doctors at the hospital often used native Mexican herbs to cure their patients. “It’s said that traditional Galenic Hippocratic medicine was used in the hospital, but really it was Indigenous medicine,” said Guevara. “They (Indigenous peoples) would share their knowledge.”

The Spanish imprint can be seen in the hospital’s architecture, said Hugo Antonio Arciniega Ávila, a historian and archaeological expert from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

The hospital, like some other colonial structures in Mexico City, is ‘encapsulated’ inside a newer building from the 1950s.

Because the Spanish built low stone structures on huge lots with massive stone walls, people who wanted to build newer facilities a century or two later would often just build over, around or among the colonial-era structures. Sometimes they would incorporate the old masonry walls into the new building, either for preservation reasons or because it was cheaper to use them than to tear them down. So from the street, there is often no sign that behind a Victorian or functionalist facade, there is a partially preserved Spanish structure within.

The hospital was built in the form of a T, with two large patios and a grand staircase devised by Spanish architect Claudio de Arciniega in the 16th century. The design provided constant ventilation and sunshine to patients. The architect also included a chapel on each of the two original floors.

“The architecture of this hospital is fascinating,” said Arciniega about the intentional layout of religious spaces and access to open air. “If you cure the soul, you can cure the body – it’s the same way the doctors thought.”

For the 67-year-old Álvarez, who has worked at the hospital for nearly 50 years and also serves as the board of trustees’ treasurer, the center has been a constant in his life. He began working at the hospital as a lab assistant at age 18.

“A lot of people ask me, why do you keep working at the Hospital de Jesus?” he said. “I tell them because I love it.”

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