Tagged “adobe”
Chan Chan
How did the Chimú raise the largest earthen city on Earth — roughly 20 square kilometers of adobe palaces, tapering earthquake-resistant walls, and marine friezes — and keep tens of thousands of people alive in one of the driest deserts on the planet, where it almost never rains?
c. 850–1470 CE (Chimú kingdom of Chimor) · Chan Chan, near Trujillo, La Libertad Region, PeruAdded July 2026
HIGH WONDERThe Great Pyramid of Cholula
How does the largest monument ever built by anyone — four and a half million cubic metres of hand-made mud brick — end up so completely forgotten that the Spanish put a church on top of it thinking it was a hill?
c. 300 BCE - 900 CE, in at least six superimposed building stages spanning roughly 1,200 years · San Andrés Cholula, Puebla, MexicoAdded August 2026