What was Teotihuacan, the great ancient city near Mexico City?

Teotihuacan, city of the gods

Teotihuacan, la ciudad de los dioses

between 100 BC and 650. Fifty kilometres from today's Mexico City, a planned city on a grid grew from about 100 BC into the largest in the Americas.

Where: Mexico, Teotihuacan

What happened

Fifty kilometres from today's Mexico City, a planned city on a grid grew from about 100 BC into the largest in the Americas. At its height, roughly AD 350–550, Teotihuacan covered twenty square kilometres and housed around 100,000 people in some 2,000 apartment compounds, along an avenue lined with temples and crowned by the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. It controlled the obsidian trade and its influence reached Maya cities such as Tikal. Who built it is unknown, as is its original name: Teotihuacan, 'where the gods were made', is what the Aztecs called the ruins a thousand years later, believing the present age of the world had been created there. Around 550–650 its main buildings were burned and the city declined.

Say it

La Pirámide del Sol está en Teotihuacan, cerca de la Ciudad de México.

The Pyramid of the Sun is in Teotihuacan, near Mexico City.

Why it matters

Teotihuacan is Mexico's most visited archaeological site and the Aztecs' idea of a holy ancient city; its name and its avenue of the dead are Nahuatl names that live on in Mexican Spanish.

There today

See
At Teotihuacan, fifty kilometres from Mexico City, you can walk the avenue lined with temples and look up at the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon.

Connected

Sources

  1. Teotihuacan – M. del C. Solanes and E. Vela — Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces)
  2. Zona Arqueológica de Teotihuacan — INAH
  3. Teotihuacan — World History Encyclopedia
  4. Who built the great city of Teotihuacan? — National Geographic