Overview
Nobody knows what its builders called themselves or what language they spoke; the city was burned around 550 and the collapse is unexplained. Its plan is the point — a three-kilometre avenue with the pyramids of the Sun and Moon at one end, laid out on a grid oriented fifteen degrees east of north, which the whole city obeys. Excavation since 2003 has traced a tunnel under the Feathered Serpent pyramid, sealed for eighteen centuries and filled with offerings.
Highlights
Enter at gate 1 and walk the avenue north so the Pyramid of the Moon grows in front of you, which is how the plan was meant to work. Climbing the Sun pyramid has been closed for conservation in recent years; check before building a day around it. Go at opening — the site is treeless, the altitude is 2,300 metres, and the sun is punishing by eleven.