Mitla — archaeological site
User:Gengiskanhg · CC BY-SA 3.0

Mitla

  • 2 min read
  • 16.917° N 96.400° W

Interesting facts

  • Mitla's high priest, whose title was Uija-tao, lived at the site, and the main temple was known as the house of the vital force.
  • Zapotec belief held that nobles buried at Mitla became cloud people, ancestors who could intercede with the gods for the living.
  • Some of the stone blocks in Mitla's buildings weigh as much as 18 tonnes.
  • The stone fretwork was originally set against a background of red stucco, so the patterns stood out in light and colour.
  • In 1553 Archbishop Albuquerque ordered the site's destruction, and stone from Mitla was later reused in Spanish churches, including Oaxaca Cathedral.
  • The friar Toribio de Benavente, known as Motolinía, described Mitla in the mid-16th century, and Diego García de Palacio documented it in 1576.
  • The urban core covered only one to two square kilometres, but its farmland spread over more than 20 square kilometres around it.
  • The Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Caso excavated at Mitla in the 1920s and 1930s.
  • Mitla is the second most visited archaeological site in Oaxaca state, after Monte Albán.

Why it is worth it

Mitla is unlike any other ancient site in Mexico because of its walls: long friezes of geometric fretwork, known as grecas, made of thousands of small cut and polished stones fitted together without mortar into stepped spirals, zigzags and meanders. Panels of these mosaics cover facades, door frames and interior rooms, the patterns changing from one panel to the next, and no other site in Mesoamerica has decoration of this kind. The name comes from the Nahuatl Mictlán, "place of the dead"; in Zapotec the site is called Lyobaa, "place of rest", and it was a religious centre where priests officiated and rulers were buried.

Mitla was founded by the Zapotecs of the Oaxaca Valley and reached its greatest size between about 750 and the Spanish conquest in 1521, with Mixtec influences visible in its later architecture. The ruins are divided into five groups of buildings, of which the Group of the Columns and the Church Group are the best preserved. In the Group of the Columns, a long Hall of Columns, about 120 by 21 feet, is lined with six massive monolithic columns of volcanic stone that once carried the roof, and a narrow passage leads from it into an inner courtyard surrounded by rooms whose walls are entirely sheathed in fretwork. Beneath some of the buildings lie cruciform tombs whose walls and ceilings carry the same stone mosaics. Local tradition attaches a story to a column known as the Column of Life: it is said that if you wrap your arms around it, the gap left between your hands shows how much of your life remains.

After the conquest, the Spanish dismantled part of the site and, in the 16th century, built the church of San Pablo directly on top of one of the ancient platforms, reusing its stones; the colonial church and the pre-Hispanic courtyards beside it now form a single striking ensemble. The ruins stand within the town of San Pablo Villa de Mitla, at about 1,480 m above sea level in the eastern arm of the Valley of Oaxaca.

Getting there

Mitla lies about 40 km southeast of the city of Oaxaca, reached by road through the Tlacolula valley. The town of Ocotlán de Morelos is about 32 km away in a straight line. The nearest airport is Oaxaca International Airport (OAX), about 36 km away.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Oaxaca 5The Most Beautiful Places in Mexico 56The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites in Mexico 12The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites 193The Greatest Archaeological Wonders 306

From the encyclopaedia

Mitla is the second-most important archeological site in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico, after Monte Albán, and the most important of the Zapotec culture. The site is located 44 km from the city of Oaxaca, in the upper end of the Tlacolula Valley, one of the three cold, high valleys that form the Central Valleys Region of the state. At an elevation of 4,855 ft, surrounded by the mountains of the Sierra Madre del Sur, the archeological site is within the modern municipality of San Pablo Villa de Mitla. It is 24 mi (38 km) southeast of Oaxaca city. While Monte Albán was the most important politically of the Zapotec centers, Mitla became the main religious one in a later period as the area became dominated by the Mixtec.

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16.91667, -96.40000per Wikidata