Tajín Veracruz
— — the city of three hundred and sixty-five niches.
Not only on a wall.
“El Tajín stands in the green hill country of northern Veracruz, a few kilometres from the town of Papantla. The Pyramid of the Niches carries 365 squared openings on its faces, one for each day of the Mesoamerican solar year. The city was a Totonac capital that rose, held the Gulf coast for four centuries, and fell before Cortés ever landed.
Tajín Veracruz, 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.
El Tajín sits in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental in northern Veracruz state, Mexico, about ten kilometres west of Papantla. The site covers roughly 1,056 hectares and was at its height between 800 and 1200 CE, when it functioned as a major political and religious centre on the Gulf coast. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992. The civilisation responsible is most often identified with the Totonac, though Huastec and earlier Classic Veracruz influence is also evident.
The Pyramid of the Niches, the signature monument at El Tajín, rises in six tiers to about twenty metres. Its faces are pierced with 365 squared niches, one for each day of the Mesoamerican solar year, a count first documented by the explorer Diego Ruiz in the late 18th century. The walls were finished in stucco and painted; traces of red and black pigment have been recovered. The ball-court walls carry sculpted panels depicting the sacrificial conclusion of the Mesoamerican ball game.
Each year the Cumbre Tajín festival, held in the days around the spring equinox, brings tens of thousands of visitors to the site for music, ceremony, and the Voladores de Papantla. The voladores ritual, in which four flyers descend head-down from a thirty-metre pole while a fifth plays flute and drum from the top, was inscribed by UNESCO in 2009 as Intangible Cultural Heritage. The ceremony is rooted in a Totonac petition for rain and is performed regularly at the site entrance.