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Departure Mexico City: 10:00 am
This tour is intended to bring the cultures
and the daily life of the inhabitants of the Valley of
Mexico in the centuries before the Spanish conquest closer
to you and we will visit some of the best preserved, but
least known surviving pyramids in the metropolitan area:
Tenayuca and Acatitlan, as well as the Plaza de las
tres culturas in Tlatelolco. This tour will give you
a better idea of how the pyramids of pre-conquest
Tenochtitlan must have looked before the Spanish conquest.
The very well preserved pyramids of Tenayuca and Acatitlan
can be said to be smaller version of the main pyramid in the
heart of the imperial capital.
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, which
is one of the reasons why the pyramid could survive the wars
of conquest and the colonial period almost intact.
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The
double stairway leading up to the temple platform
with two separate sanctuaries is a typical aspect of
Aztec temple architecture, distinguishing it from
the pyramid styles used by neighbouring people in
the same period. This is a drawing from the 16th
century Codex
Ixtlilxochitl showing the typical features of an
Aztec temple pyramid.
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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 square of Tlatelolco, the twin
city of the imperial capital Tenochtitlan. On our way back
from Tlalnepantla, we will visit the Plaza de las tres
culturas in Tlatelolco.
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 around 5 hours
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