Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture
November 17, 2012 — August 11, 2013
Traveling

Our Global Kitchen opens November 17, 2012.
© AMNH/Hinterland
© AMNH/Hinterland
The Exhibition Department is recreating an immense central market that once served Tenochtitlán, the capital city of the Aztec Empire. The market was visited by up to 60,000 people a day and, until roughly 500 years ago, no one outside the Americas had ever seen many of the items for sale here: chocolate, vanilla, maize (corn), tomatoes, or chile peppers.
© AMNH/R. Mickens
© AMNH/R. Mickens
Preparators create gourds that will be featured in the Aztec market. Residents of the Aztec Empire ate mostly plant foods.
© AMNH/R. Mickens
© AMNH/R. Mickens
The market of Tlatelolco, just north of Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital, was vast and well organized, with rows of merchandise arranged in separate sections.
© AMNH/R. Mickens
© AMNH/R. Mickens
People have been enjoying the spicy taste of chile peppers for thousands of years—but until 500 years ago, only in the Americas.
© AMNH/R. Mickens
© AMNH/R. Mickens