The Mysterious City of Pyramids

Werner Abegg Gallery
21 February – 30 May 2010

Teotihuacan was once the largest city in Pre-Columbian America – a cosmopolitan metropolis with unique monumental buildings. Between 100 and 650 AD – that is, about one thousand years before the Aztecs – the city was a powerful economic and cultural centre which influenced the whole of Mesoamerica.

The city was laid out like a chessboard, with a wide processional avenue forming its main axis. The avenue linked the two most monumental structures in Central America: the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. The pyramids are flanked by numerous temple platforms and palace complexes. Brightly coloured murals, rich in symbolism, adorned their walls, their pigments applied to the plaster when it was still damp. The city was divided into residential and artisans’ districts, and also had distinct quarters for people from different regions of Mexico,who retained much of their own original culture.

Teotihuacan flourished for more than five hundred years until a devastating fire in the 7th century marked the beginning of the pyramid city’s decline.

At the time of the Aztecs in the 15th and 16th centuries, the city had been lying in ruins for almost a thousand years. It was the Aztecs who gave this mysterious place its name: Teotihuacan, ‘ where men become gods’. According to their myth of origin it was here that the world was created.

The exhibition presents some 450 artefacts from Mexico: colourful murals, precious clay vessels, stone sculptures, figures cut from obsidian, and wonderful jewellery. Also, visitors will be among the first to see some recently discovered, spectacular finds, including the magnificent sacrificial offerings from the Sun and Moon Pyramids and the Temple of the Feathered Serpent.

Even now, only a small fraction of Teotihuacan has been explored and excavated. An air of mystery still hangs over these extraordinary ruins.

Supported by the Vontobel Foundation and Thomas Schmidheiny

The exhibition was conceived by the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes and the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico, with the support of the Fundación Televisa A.C.

A co-production of the musée du quai Branly, Paris, with the Museum Rietberg Zürich and the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin.