The Ancient City
Teotihuacán covered eight square miles (20 square km) and housed 125,000—200,000 people at its height (AD 300-550). The population was densest in the center where temples, pyramids and large rectangular apartment compounds were laid out on a vast grid oriented to 15.5 degrees east of north ("Teotihuacán North"). The irregular city limits were determined by archaeologist Rene Millon and his University of Rochester team in the epochal Teotihuacán Mapping Project of the 1960s. Today, as has been true ever since the city was largely abandoned 1500 years, most of the ancient city is covered with agricultural fields and villages, although increasing urbanization is obliterating many of the formerly open fields.
Downtown Teotihuacán forms the heart of the modern Archaeological Zone and is the area open to visitors today. It contains the major buildings of the Classic period city, including the Sun and Moon Pyramids, the Ciudadela (Citadel), and scores of temples, "palaces" and other residences. Only a tiny portion of these have been excavated and even fewer are partially or fully restored. The empty rectangular blocks on the map are unexcavated structures Millon and his colleagues identified on the ground. Most were probably large masonry apartment compounds that sheltered scores or even hundreds of residents.
Written by Richard A. Diehl
