Tepantitla

A residential and ritual compound about five hundred metres east of the Pyramid of the Sun, Tepantitla is famous for the best-preserved mural cycle at Teotihuacan. The Patio of the Great Goddess preserves a continuous painted programme on three walls — the giant frontal figure of the city's principal deity above, and below her a teeming scene of small figures playing in a watery paradise that some Mesoamericans identified as Tlalocan, the realm of the rain god.

The compound is fenced and gated; in practice that means a custodian will unlock the door for you for free during opening hours. Tepantitla takes thirty minutes to do properly and is one of the genuine highlights of the site. The walk from the Pyramid of the Sun to Tepantitla is unshaded — go early or late.

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A story
The Tepantitla murals include the famous 'Tlalocan' or paradise scene — tiny figures swimming in rivers, dancing, singing, picking flowers, all surrounded by butterflies and birds. For decades the dominant figure looming above them was identified as the rain god Tlaloc. In the 1970s the art historian Esther Pasztory argued convincingly that the figure is actually a female Great Goddess of Teotihuacan, the central deity of the city's pantheon, and the reading has stuck — overturning a generation of textbook iconography.

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