Xochicalco

Toltec · Mexico

Field notes

civilizations

Toltec

types

Ceremonial pyramid · City

occupied

650 CE — 900 CE

country

Mexico

The site

Xochicalco, whose Nahuatl name means "in the house of Flowers," is a pre-Columbian city and ceremonial center in Morelos, Mexico, associated with the Toltec and at its height between about 650 and 900 CE. Its ceremonial core crowns an artificially leveled hill, ringed by terraced residential slopes. Rising after the fall of Teotihuacan, whose architecture and iconography it echoes alongside Maya and Matlatzinca influences, this UNESCO World Heritage Site even guards an observatory carved into the rock.

Nearby sites

~72 km

Templo Mayor

~108 km

Cholula

~110 km

Teotihuacan

~140 km

Tulasas