Great Pyramid of Cholula

At first sight the Great Pyramid of Cholula looks like a natural hill with a colonial church on its summit. The hill is in fact the largest pyramid by volume known anywhere: a mass of adobe estimated at more than 4.45 million cubic metres, against roughly 2.5 million for the Great Pyramid of Giza. It rises only about 25 metres above the plain, but its final base measures some 300 by 315 metres. Its Nahuatl name, Tlachihualtepetl, means "constructed mountain". The pyramid stands in the centre of Cholula, an old city just west of Puebla; the temple on its final stage faced the volcano Iztaccíhuatl.

It grew in stages over roughly a thousand years, from the 3rd century BC to the 9th century AD, each new pyramid wrapped around the last, and it has traditionally been associated with the god Quetzalcoatl. The earliest buildings use the talud-tablero profile linked with Teotihuacan. The Pyramid of the Painted Skulls, built around 200–350, had murals on its stepped walls, and the radial Pyramid of the Nine Stories that covered it around 350–450 already exceeded Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the Moon in volume. Influence from the Gulf Coast, above all El Tajín, shows in the carved altars of the Courtyard of the Altars on the south side. At its height Cholula is thought to have held around 100,000 people. Even after the pyramid was abandoned it kept its sacred standing, and by the time the Spaniards arrived it was overgrown. In 1594 they built the church of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios on top, still a major pilgrimage sanctuary.

Because the church is a protected monument, the pyramid could never be stripped and rebuilt like the monuments of Teotihuacan; it was explored from the inside instead. In 1931 the architect Ignacio Marquina began driving tunnels into it, with most of the digging directed by the site guardian Marino Gómez using mining methods and small rail carts. Over the following decades about eight kilometres of passages were cut through the layered structures, exposing staircases, altars with offerings, burials and murals — among them the "Bebedores", a scene of figures drinking from pulque vessels. A second campaign, Proyecto Cholula, uncovered the plazas and altars of the south side between 1966 and 1974.

Getting there

The pyramid stands in the city of Cholula, under 1 km from the centre, in the San Andrés Cholula municipality, about 6 km west of the city of Puebla. The nearest airport is Puebla's Hermanos Serdán International Airport (PBC), about 13 km away.