Tour Teotihuacan - The Avenue Of The Dead

The very spine of Teotihuacan is the Avenue of the Dead.
 Two full miles of it has been excavated and now provides the axis for the pyramids, temples and ruins that the ancient city is now famous for. However, this is only half of the avenue’s true length – a testament to the enormous spread of the city when it was at its peak. It’s hard to imagine that the city visitors see today is only a portion of what Teotihuacan truly was.

Photo from Secret Civilizations - - nhk.or.jp

The Avenue of the Dead (a name that sounds more like the subtitle to an Indiana Jones movie rather than an actual archaeological feature) was so named by the Aztecs who believed the temples lining the forty yard-wide street were the tombs of ancient kings. It runs between the Temple of Quetzalcoatl to the south and the Pyramid of the Moon to the north, its path slipping just 15.5 degrees east of true north. There are several theories on why the avenue, and therefore the entire city, was aligned this way. One theory suggests the avenue runs exactly perpendicular to the rising and setting of the equinox sun. Another theory indicates that the Avenue of the Dead points directly toward the valley’s tallest mountain.

Photo from gettyimages.com

Visitors today may not appreciate the Avenue of the Dead beyond the extended hike it presents within the Mexican heat. It’s hard to think about what’s under one’s feet when our eyes are drawn toward the peaks of the great pyramids towering above it. But I think it’s safe to say that the Avenue of the Dead played an important role for the mysteriously unidentified people who constructed it. After all, it is this street that laid the very foundation of the greatest city in Mesoamerica.