Cholula – The Great Pyramid

Cholula is a suburb of Puebla which is one of Mexico’s biggest cities but is still in the state of Mexico. What makes Cholula interesting is that it is the site of the biggest pyramid ever constructed – although it is mostly in ruins now.

With our visit here, to Teotihuacan and to Cairo we’ve now seen the biggest three pyramids in the world.  Hurrah !

The thing that becomes clear very quickly at Cholula is that you can’t see much of it – the pyramid has not been excavated and now looks like a small hill. When the Spaniards invaded they showed their domination of many of the indigenous civilizations by building churches on top of their religious sites – and at Cholula there was no exception. So now the biggest pyramid in the world looks like a small hill with a big church on top !

The church is called Nuestra Senora de los Remedios and it is sitting on top of the Pyramid which is 66m high and 350m on each side. The pyramid was constructed between 200 BC and 800 AD.

There are a number of tunnels through the pyramid that have been excavated and that are open to the public. However we arrived to be told that there had been a tunnel collapse and that they were closed.

On climbing the pyramid to see the church we bought some fried grasshoppers (chapulines) from a local vendor. Can’t say I was too enamoured with them – they were a bit like salty, crunchy rice crackers. We did choose the non-spicy ones though.

There is a campground in Cholula which is only about 20 minutes walk from the pyramid which made a convenient place for us to spend the night.