At the end of the 20th century, the Secretariat of Urban Development and Ecology carried out remodeling work on the Old Archbishop's Palace, now the Art Museum of the Secretariat of Finance and Public Credit. This work caused some damage to the building, so the Subdirectorate of Archaeological Salvage, through archaeologists Guadalupe de la Peña Vilchez, Judith Padilla Yedra, and Pedro Francisco Sánchez Nava, conducted research and safeguarded the heritage in 1987.

Thanks to this work, a sloping wall was identified on the north and east sides of the first architectural section of the Temple of Tezcatlipoca. On July 1, 1988, in the adjoining courtyard under an oval fountain, a monolithic sculpture was found, a Temalácatl painted red with the representation, on the edge, of eleven triumphs of Moctezuma Ilhuicamina over other peoples, and a solar deity at the top. In its center is a hollow where there may have been a ring to which prisoners were tied before facing the Mexica warriors. These types of gladiatorial sacrifices were performed in honor of Xipe, the red Tezcatlipoca.

In 1994, archaeologists Laura del Olmo Frese and Diego Jiménez Badillo, from the Urban Archaeology Program, delimited the west and south sides of the temple of Tezcatlipoca. This intervention confirmed that the facade and the access stairway are located to the west.

The INAH decided to open six archaeological windows so that the public could see these pre-Hispanic remains, as well as some architectural evidence from New Spain.

The first window is located in an office to the left of the museum entrance and measures 2.5 m wide by 4 m long. Through it, you can see the upper part of an alfarda topped by an architectural cube, the southern limit of the access stairway to what was possibly the base platform of the Temple of Tezcatlipoca. At the top of the alfarda is a replica of an anthropomorphic sculpture that has no connection with the Mexica building.

Source: Raúl Barrera Rodríguez, director of the Urban Archaeology Program