Pyramid of the Sun
— — a stairway the Aztecs found already ancient.
Not only on a wall.
“The largest building at Teotihuacan, raised in stages between roughly the first and third centuries. It stands about sixty-five metres above the floor of the Avenue of the Dead, third in the world by volume after the great pyramids of Egypt. The Aztecs found the city already abandoned and gave it the name we still use. They walked the same stones the visitors now walk.
Pyramid of the Sun, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Pyramid of the Sun rises at the northern end of Teotihuacan, the ancient city in the Basin of Mexico forty kilometres northeast of Mexico City. Construction began around 100 CE on the Avenue of the Dead, the broad ceremonial axis that runs north toward the smaller Pyramid of the Moon. The structure measures roughly two hundred twenty-five metres along each base and sixty-five metres in height, the third-largest pyramid in the world by volume. The archaeological zone was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1987.
The pyramid is built on an inner core of adobe and tezontle, the porous red volcanic rock of the Valley of Mexico, faced with cut basalt and finished originally in lime stucco painted in red and ochre. Four tiered platforms rise to a flat summit reached by a stairway of two hundred forty-eight steps. Beneath the centre, a natural lava tube was discovered in 1971, running about a hundred metres east-west; the builders almost certainly knew of it and likely chose the site for it.
The Teotihuacan zone opens daily from nine to five; admission is around ninety pesos. Direct buses run hourly from Mexico City's Autobuses del Norte and take about an hour each way. The pyramid's summit has been closed to climbing since 2020 to protect the structure, but the lower terraces, the Avenue of the Dead, and the Pyramid of the Moon remain open. Mornings before ten are coolest; the high-altitude sun at two thousand three hundred metres is unforgiving by noon.