Teotihuacan on Foot

Welcome to Teotihuacan. You are standing in the middle of the Citadel, a square enclosure about 400 metres on each side, closed in by four long platforms topped with small temples. INAH describes it as the political centre of the city. Here in the plaza is a small central altar, and at the far end, to the east, the big stepped pyramid you see is the Adosada Platform. Behind it hides the finest building in Teotihuacan, the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. On either side there were two residential compounds. Teotihuacan began as a cluster of villages about two centuries before our era and grew into the largest city of ancient Mexico. INAH estimates that at its height, around the fourth and fifth centuries, some 100,000 people lived here, spread over more than 2,000 apartment compounds. Its influence reached as far as Tikal and Kaminaljuyú in today's Guatemala. We do not know what its inhabitants called the city. Teotihuacan is the name the Mexica gave it centuries later, in Nahuatl, when they found it in ruins. It is usually translated as "the place where the gods were made" or "where people become gods". Look at the walls of the platforms. They alternate a sloping wall, the talud, with a vertical panel, the tablero. That combination is the hallmark of Teotihuacan architecture, and you will see it all along the walk. Now walk east towards the Adosada Platform. Go around one of its sides and into the passage between it and the carved façade behind it.

This is the façade of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, also called the Temple of Quetzalcóatl. It is one of the oldest buildings in the city, raised in seven tiers of talud and tablero, and it was probably completed early in the third century. Look at the panels: two carved heads alternate. One is the feathered serpent, with its collar of feathers. The other is a more geometric being with large rings around its eyes, which specialists read in different ways, as a headdress or as a war serpent. On the sloping walls below, the serpent appears in profile, swimming among seashells and conches. Traces of red and blue paint survive. The platform you just walked around was built later, in front of the temple, and covered much of this façade. Between 1980 and 1989, INAH teams led by Rubén Cabrera, working with Saburo Sugiyama and George Cowgill, excavated around and inside the temple. They found the remains of 137 people buried in pits, and they estimate that about 200 were sacrificed when the building was constructed. Many were men buried with projectile points and military dress; others were young women. Chemical analysis of their bones shows that many had spent most of their lives far from Teotihuacan. Reproductions of two of these burials are on display in the Museum of Teotihuacan Culture. In 2003, after heavy rain, a hole opened at the foot of the stairway. Underneath was a tunnel more than 100 metres long running beneath the temple. The archaeologist Sergio Gómez Chávez explored it for years and recovered tens of thousands of objects, and in 2015 his team found liquid mercury at the far end. The tunnel is not open to the public. Now head back west across the plaza, go down the stairs of the western platform to the Avenue of the Dead and turn right, to the north. Walk about 450 metres to the point where the San Juan River crosses the avenue.

Here the San Juan River crosses the Avenue of the Dead, the great axis of the city. Look north: the avenue runs straight to the Pyramid of the Moon, with the Pyramid of the Sun on your right. According to INAH, the avenue is about 4 kilometres long and about 50 metres wide, and some 80 platforms of different sizes stand along it. Teotihuacan was a planned city. Its streets, houses and temples follow one orientation, turned slightly away from north, and UNESCO notes that the city's planners even changed the course of this river so that it crossed the avenue. The Citadel, where we came from, lay south of the river; the great pyramids lay to the north. The name Avenue of the Dead is also Mexica. When the Mexica saw the mounds lined up along both sides, they took them for tombs. Today we know they were temple platforms and building complexes, but the name stuck. Cotton, fine feathers, shells, jade and food reached Teotihuacan from distant markets, and families from other regions lived in the city too. INAH documents, for example, a neighbourhood of Zapotecs from what is now Oaxaca. Keep walking north along the avenue for about 120 metres. On your left you will see a metal roof over some ruins, with stairs leading down. That is the next stop.

Under this roof are the Superimposed Buildings, also known as Los Subterráneos, the Underground Rooms. If you go down the stairs you will see walls and floors from two different periods, one on top of the other. The people of Teotihuacan filled their old buildings with stone and earth and built a new, larger one on top. This complex was excavated between 1917 and 1922 by a team led by the Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio, with Ignacio Marquina and José Reygadas. Gamio's work in this valley was pioneering. He studied the monuments and also the people living around them in today's villages, and in 1922 he published a huge book on the population of the Teotihuacan valley. Gamio described these remains as a possible palace and saw in them the two great phases of the city's architecture. In 2017 INAH carried out a new conservation project here. You will meet the same habit of building on top in the pyramids. Inside the Pyramid of the Moon, archaeologists have identified seven buildings nested one inside another. Every façade you see at Teotihuacan is the last version of something older left inside. If the stairs are closed, look from the railing and carry on. Now comes the longest stretch: follow the avenue north for about 800 metres. You will cross several platforms with steps that run across the avenue. Stop when the Pyramid of the Sun is directly on your right, in the plaza at its foot.

In front of you is the Pyramid of the Sun, the largest building in Teotihuacan. Its base measures about 224 metres on each side and, according to INAH, it stands about 65 metres high. It is also one of the oldest buildings in the city: it went up in the first centuries of our era, although archaeologists still debate the exact date. Like most names here, Pyramid of the Sun comes from the Mexica and from later chroniclers. We do not know which deity its builders dedicated it to. The shape you see is not exactly the original one. Between 1905 and 1910 the archaeologist Leopoldo Batres, working for the government of Porfirio Díaz, stripped whole layers from the outside and rebuilt the pyramid. UNESCO notes that Batres arbitrarily gave it a fifth tier that probably never existed. The most interesting part lies underneath. In 1971 a shaft was found at the foot of the main stairway, leading into a cave that had been turned into a tunnel, about 100 metres long, ending in several chambers right under the centre of the pyramid. Many researchers think the pyramid was built on top of it on purpose, because in Mesoamerica caves were entrances to the underworld and places of origin. Between 2008 and 2011 an INAH team led by Alejandro Sarabia dug further tunnels inside and found foundation offerings, among them a human figure of obsidian on a pyrite disc. Climbing is not allowed today. From this plaza, look west: the sun sets in that direction, and the pyramid's main façade faces that way. Follow the avenue north for about 300 metres. On your right, under a small roof, you will see a large cat painted in yellow over red stripes.

Under this roof is the Puma Mural. It was discovered during the 1963 excavations and is part of a group of platforms and temples now called the Puma Mural Group. Take a moment to look at it. It shows a big cat in profile, jaws open and claws out. Because of its colour, its unspotted coat and the shape of its tail, archaeologists think it is a puma rather than a jaguar. It walks over a background of slanting red, white and green bands that stand for water, and the moulding below carries green circles, chalchihuites, precious stones that symbolised the divine. Teotihuacan was a painted city. Nearly all the walls of its temples and houses were covered in plaster and paint, and what looks grey today was once full of colour. Much of what we know about these paintings is owed to the art historian Beatriz de la Fuente of UNAM, who led the great catalogue of pre-Hispanic mural painting in Mexico. The mural museum near Gate 3, at the end of this walk, bears her name. Pumas once lived in these valleys, and across the Americas from Canada to Patagonia. They have disappeared from this region today. Continue north along the avenue for about 300 metres, until it opens into a large plaza in front of the Pyramid of the Moon. Go to the middle of the plaza, beside the square altar.

You are in the Moon Plaza, at the end of the Avenue of the Dead. In front of you rises the Pyramid of the Moon, more than 45 metres high, with the hill called Cerro Gordo behind it. Around the plaza, buildings of talud and tablero frame one of the most harmonious spaces in the city. Between 1998 and 2004 the Moon Pyramid Project, led by Saburo Sugiyama and Rubén Cabrera, dug tunnels inside the pyramid. They found seven buildings stacked one over another, each larger than the last, and in several of them foundation offerings with sacrificed people and animals: pumas, wolves, eagles and snakes, together with objects of obsidian and greenstone. Since 2015 INAH has also been investigating Structure A, the building just south of the pyramid, and has found pits holding large greenstone monoliths set upright, some weighing more than half a tonne. Centuries later the Mexica set one of their central myths here. In the account recorded in the sixteenth century by Friar Bernardino de Sahagún, the gods gathered at Teotihuacan, in darkness, to create a new sun. The humble Nanahuatzin threw himself into the fire and became the Sun. The wealthy Tecuciztécatl hesitated, jumped after him and became the Moon. So the Fifth Sun was born, the age in which the Mexica lived. It is a Mexica myth about a city that was already in ruins, and we do not know what the Teotihuacanos themselves told. Climbing the Pyramid of the Moon is not allowed today. Now look to the southwest corner of the plaza, on your left as you face the pyramid. Climb the stairway that leads into the Palace of Quetzalpapálotl.

You are in the Palace of Quetzalpapálotl, a Nahuatl name joining two words: quetzal, the bird with green plumes, and papálotl, butterfly. Step into the Patio of the Pillars. The square pillars around the courtyard are carved with birds seen from the front and in profile, with feathers and ornaments, and some of the eyes still keep their obsidian inlays. Up on the edge of the roof you will see stone merlons, and on the walls, traces of red paint. According to INAH this was a true palace, probably the residence of priests or leaders, in a privileged spot beside the Moon Plaza. Much of what you see is reconstruction. Between 1962 and 1964 the archaeologist Jorge R. Acosta led the excavation and rebuilding of the palace as part of the Teotihuacan Project, the largest Mexican archaeology had undertaken up to then. Acosta put pillars and roofs back up so that visitors could understand what it was like to live in a Teotihuacan house: rooms around open courtyards that let in the light and collected rainwater. Notice the contrast between the original stones, carved and worn, and the smoother rebuilt sections. Now follow the signs to the Patio of the Jaguars, behind this palace to the west and a few steps lower down.

This is the Patio of the Jaguars. Paintings of jaguars survive on the porch walls in two versions. Look first for the procession: richly dressed cats with feathered headdresses, holding large feathered seashells in their mouths as if blowing them like trumpets. Then look for the smaller jaguars covered in a kind of net. New mural finds in this same complex were published in 2023. Under this palace is an older building, the Temple of the Feathered Conch Shells, with green, hook-beaked birds, perhaps macaws or parrots, painted on its panels, and large feathered shells carved on its façade. If the passage is open, you can go down to see it. Teotihuacan remained a great city for centuries. Around the middle of the sixth century a period of violence broke out and badly damaged the city centre, apparently at the hands of part of the city's own population. Teotihuacan stayed inhabited, smaller, and slowly lost its importance. When the Mexica arrived centuries later, they found the ruins, gave them the names we still use, and came here on pilgrimage. This is where our walk ends. The nearest exit is Gate 3, about 200 metres to the west, next to the Beatriz de la Fuente Museum of Teotihuacan Murals. If you parked at Gate 1, head back south along the Avenue of the Dead, about 2.5 kilometres. Thank you for walking Teotihuacan with me.