Day 36 : Cholula & the Great Pyramid

A day trip out of Puebla brought me to Cholula, located about 12 km outside of Puebla.  Took a public bus which took about 40 mins to get to Cholula town centre.

 

The most famous attraction in Cholula is the Great Pyramid (technically called a temple, not a Pyramid), or also known as Tlachihualtepetl, an ancient Aztec temple.  In fact, it’s not one temple at all, but consisting of no less than six, one on top of the other, built over 6 centuries.

It grew in stages, as successive civilisations improved on what had already been built. At 450 meters wide and 66 meters tall, it is the largest pyramid on the planet, with a base four times larger than the Great Pyramid at Giza and nearly twice the volume (The Great Pyramid of Giza is taller, at 146 metres high).  It also retains the title of the largest monument ever constructed anywhere on Earth, by any civilisation, to this day.

At first glance, you would never think that it is a pyramid.  From a distance, it looked like a hill, crowned by a majestic church with gilded domes.  A church on top of a pyramid sounds extremely bizarre doesn’t it?

It is thought that the ancient Aztecs used the Great Pyramid of Cholula as a place of worship for about 1,000 years before moving to a new, smaller location close by. 

As the pyramid was built out of adobe (a type of brick made of out of baked mud), when it was abandoned, nature took its course with vegetation growth and it disappeared under a mound.

In 1594, when the Spanish conquered Cholula and after settling in the city and claiming it for their own, they built a church “La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Los Remedios” (Our Lady of Remedies Church), on top of the hidden pyramid mountain.

The Pyramid wasn’t discovered until 1910, when locals started to build a psychiatric ward nearby. By the 1930s, archaeologists started to uncover it, creating a series of tunnels stretching 8 kilometres in length to give them access. 

The entrance ticket, which costs MXP 65, gives one access to the site of the Pyramids (or at least sections which they had managed to uncover), the tunnels, as well as the museum. 

The tunnels were very interesting, as I wandered through narrow, dimly lit subterranean passages and stairways leading from one side of the pyramid to the other.  At times the pathway detoured briefly down stairways to view chambers from another century and peer up along treacherous-looking stairs toward levels built centuries later.

I also heard that the Cholula Pyramid is a much better experience, as it allows visitors into the chambers deep inside, and not just only over them. 

The museum is small, but worth going into.  The cutaway view of the pyramid, showing the various levels and the excavated portion far from the summit, gave a better picture of the size of the grounds from an aerial view.

Particularly since the rest of the pyramid will never be excavated, because the church on top is a protected colonial monument.

There are also replicas of a couple of mural that were found in the Pyramid on display.

A visit to La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Los Remedios, the church on top of the Pyramid, is a steep climb, but well compensated with great views of entire Cholula and even Puebla, as well as views of the three volcanoes (Popacatepetl, Iztaccihuatl and La Malinche), one of which was blowing off steam when I was there.

The town of Cholula is also pleasant to walk around, and a visit to “smaller” churches such as Capilla Real (Royal Chapel) and San Pedro Apostal is worth doing.