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Spanish conquistadors founded Mexico City in 1521 atop the razed island-capital of Tenochtitlan, the cultural and political center of the Aztec (Mexican) empire. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban settlements in the Western Hemisphere, and it is ranked as one of the world’s most populous metropolitan areas. One of the few major cities not located along the banks of a river, it lies in an inland basin called the Valley of Mexico, or Mesa Central. The valley is an extension of the southern Mexican Plateau and is also known as Acanthus (Nahuatl: “Close to the Water”) because the area once contained several large lakes. The name Mexico is derived from Nahuatl, the language of its precolonial inhabitants.