Cholollan Holy City

Cholollan, the place of refuge, was one of the holiest cities of central Mexico, and its pyramid was called Tlachihualtepetl, the hand-made mountain, by later Nahuatl speakers. Six building campaigns from the third century BC to the ninth century AD wrapped one adobe-brick pyramid inside another, producing the largest pyramid on earth by volume, facing the snow-capped volcano Iztaccihuatl.

The city may have held 100,000 people at its height, but in the eighth century the population collapsed and the pyramid was abandoned, though the devout went on burying their dead around it. In the twelfth century Toltec-Chichimeca invaders seized the city and built a temple to Quetzalcoatl elsewhere.

In 1594 the Spanish crowned the tree-covered monument with the church of Our Lady of Remedies, turning the sanctuary into a place of Catholic pilgrimage while native rites continued on its slopes.