After the Frida Kahlo Museum, we dedicated the next day to monumentality, setting off for Teotihuacan, the “city of the gods”. After a good two and a half hour journey, the view that unfolded surpassed all our expectations. We walked for hours along the huge buildings and wide roads, trying to imagine the daily lives of the more than one hundred thousand people who once lived here. Fortunately, it was possible to go up the Pyramid of the Moon, which stands at the end of the Avenue of the Dead, for a while; the stairs offered a fantastic view of the entire valley, the Pyramid of the Sun and the ceremonial spaces.
I was particularly struck by one building, whose inner courtyard is surrounded by ornate columns, and the bright red painting on its upper parts is still visible: this is the Quetzalpapálotl Palace (Palace of the Butterfly Bird). As I stood there, I involuntarily thought of the Palace of Knossos in Crete. It was striking to see how similar architectural solutions were used by cultures so far removed from the rest of the world in time and space: the arrangement of colonnaded courtyards and the characteristic use of red drew an almost eerie parallel between the Minoan and Mesoamerican civilizations.
The history of Teotihuacan began in the first century BC, and the city reached its peak between the 2nd and 6th centuries, when it became the largest and most influential metropolis in Mesoamerica. The identity of its builders remains a mystery; we do not know exactly what language they spoke or what they called themselves, since no written records have survived. The city was planned according to a strict, cosmic grid, the axis of which was the Way of the Dead, reflecting the deep astronomical and mathematical knowledge of the inhabitants of that time.
Religion and the veneration of the gods permeated every corner of the city. The most important deities included Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, who was the lord of knowledge and the wind, and Tlaloc, the god of rain and storms, on whose benevolence the fate of agricultural crops depended. The murals covering the walls of the temples often depict the figure of the Great Goddess, who symbolized fertility and the earth. These deities were not only religious figures, but also embodied the cycles of nature and social order.
The city’s economic power was based on obsidian, a volcanic glass that was mined nearby and from which the best cutting tools and weapons in the world of that time were made. Teotihuacan’s trade network reached as far as the Mayan city-states in what is now Guatemala, and its architectural style—the characteristic talud-tablero (sloping-vertical) facade—spread throughout the region. The city was not only a political but also a spiritual and pilgrimage center, where people from faraway lands came to offer sacrifices at the pyramids.
Around the 7th and 8th centuries, the city began to decline, and then, after a mysterious fire and a series of internal rebellions, it was depopulated. When the Aztecs discovered the abandoned but still monumental ruins centuries later, they were amazed by the sight. They gave the place the name Teotihuacan, which means “Where Men Become Gods.” They believed that this was the place where the Fifth Day, the current world era, was born and where the time system began.
Today, Teotihuacan is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the most visited archaeological site in Mexico. Although the pyramids are now stripped of their plaster and once vibrant painting, walking between the walls still conveys the ancient power and sacred tranquility that once characterized one of the world’s most advanced civilizations.
