Relaxed exploration of the ruin site at your own pace without any fixed schedules, with an Enkidu Personal Guide as a knowledgeable and multilingual travel companion.

Departure Mexico City: ca 8:30 - 9:00 am

(if you would like the guide to pick you up at a hotel, please inform us in advance)

Tenayuca is located north of Mexico City in Tlalnepantla. The ca 20 meter high pyramid is one of the best preserved examples of Aztec architecture. The site has a long and dramatic history, which the guide will bring closer to you. It has been claimed that this was the very capital of the people that once attacked and destroyed Tula. Tenayuca was never the center of an empire or important political entity, but it represents one of the most concrete links between the Toltec and the Aztec periods.

The temple in Tenayuca must have looked similar in style to this structure at the time of the Spanish conquest. Many early colonial sources in Spanish and Nahuatl underline in particular the similarities between the main pyramids in Tlatelolco and in Tenayuca. 

It is constructed in exactly the same style as the pyramid that once dominated the central squares of Tlatelolco. We therefore recommend a visit to the Plaza de las tres culturas in Tlatelolco on the way to or from Tenayuca (the tour will take approximately 90 minutes more if a visit to Tlatelolco is included).  

Visitors who after a visit to for instance Templo Mayor, the museum housing the remnants of the major Aztec Temple in Tenochtitlan, would like to get a better idea about what the temples of pre-conquest Tenochtitlan looked like before the Spanish conquest, are also recommended to take an excursion to Tenayuca and nearby Santa Cecilia. 

A road leads north from Tenayuca to Santa Cecilia Acatitlán, with another well preserved pyramid - much smaller and simpler but wholly restored and remarkably beautiful with its clean lines. Originally this was a temple with a double staircase very similar to the others, but it was discovered during excavation that one of the earlier structures inside was almost perfectly preserved. The ruined layers were stripped away to reveal what, after some reconstruction, is the only example of an Aztec sanctuary more or less as it would have been seen by Cortés. It’s a very plain building, rising in four steps to a single-roofed shrine approached by a broad ramped stairway. The studded decorations around the roof represent either skulls or stars. You approach the pyramid through a small museum in a colonial house, whose displays and grounds are both well worth a look.  

Duration:

We estimate that this day tour will take between 5 and 7 hours

Estimated Return to Mexico City: 18h