The city that inspired the Aztecs — the Pyramid of the Sun, the Avenue of the Dead, and a civilisation with no known name
Teotihuacan ('the place where the gods were created' in Nahuatl — an Aztec name for a city whose builders' own name for it is unknown) lies 50km northeast of Mexico City and was the largest city in the Western Hemisphere in its peak period of 100–550 CE, with a population of 125,000–200,000 and an urban footprint of 20 km². The site's three great monuments define Mesoamerican monumental architecture: the Pyramid of the Sun (65m tall, third-largest pyramid on earth by volume, built over a natural cave associated with creation mythology), the Pyramid of the Moon (aligned to Cerro Gordo mountain…
Teotihuacan was established around 100 BCE and collapsed violently around 550–650 CE — evidence of deliberate burning of the central ceremonial core suggests internal revolt rather than external conquest. At its height it was the sixth-largest city in the world, trading obsidian, pottery, and ideology across Mesoamerica; Teotihuacan influence is detectable in the art and architecture of Maya cities 1,500km away. The Aztecs later built their entire cosmological system around the myth of Teotihuacan — their creation story holds that the current sun was born here. The UNESCO designation was conf…